by Brenda Polan
The fashion business grew simultaneously. A second label, Miu Miu (her nickname), was launched in 1992, bringing the Prada vision to a wider audience. Prada Sport followed in 1994. In the late 1990s, Prada Group joined in the enthusiasm of the time for acquisition, snapping up an extraordinary portfolio of labels, including three of the most admired designers of the era—Austria’s Helmut Lang, Germany’s Jil Sander and France’s Azzedine Alaia. This marriage of talents proved disastrous: Sander resigned twice as the business that bore her name struggled to break even, while investment was unsuccessfully lavished on turning Helmut Lang into a superstar. Prada Group hinted at a stock market flotation on a number of occasions in an effort to put its finances back in order, only to cancel time and time again. When the global economic crisis erupted in late 2008, Miuccia Prada was left lamely musing that maybe her business was not the kind of business that was best suited to the financial markets. The more high-profile scrutiny of the markets would certainly not be to her tastes. Prada herself avoids the celebrity circuit. ‘I am a very private person and don’t like the high-profile nature of the fashion business. It’s dangerous to have such a large public image and I’m not as interested as some designers in becoming famous because it would take away the realities of my life.’
She has adapted more enthusiastically than many of her contemporaries to the speeding up of the fashion system in the early twenty-first century. This trend was driven by the fast fashion of mass-market companies such as Spanish retail brand Zara. As a young woman, Miuccia Prada was content to develop an idea that could be relevant for six months. By 2008, however, she commented that an idea might satisfy her for two days. The turnover of ideas has become ferocious, she acknowledged. ‘My goal now is to change our stores every two months—that’s what I would like.’ An eloquent interviewee, Miuccia Prada has made comments over the years that reflect the insecurities that many people working within the fashion industry share as to the true status of their chosen profession. Her brilliance has been to turn this insecurity to powerful use through a series of inspirational collections, driving forward fashion to its current status as a key component of modern popular culture.
Further reading: Miuccia Prada speaks eloquently about her own work, so interviews with her are frequently illuminating. Vanessa Friedman’s interview for Ten (autumn 2000) was particularly incisive. Susannah Frankel spoke to her in ‘The Feeling Is Miuccia’ (21 February 2004) for The Independent. Alessandra Galloni wrote ‘The Designer Defends Prada’ (25 January 2007) for The Wall Street Journal.
46 MARTIN MARGIELA (1959–)
The emergence of the Belgian designers in the late 1980s was one of the more unexpected twists in fashion history. A country with no great reputation for creativity produced not simply one but a veritable profusion of design talent, spawning a movement that continues to throw up surprises into the twenty-first century. Top of the list from the original wave was Martin Margiela, who showed new ways of wearing familiar clothes, drawing on inspiration from flea markets and introducing a new kind of fashion that was swiftly labelled deconstructionist, with a stripped-down functionalist aesthetic.
Although not one of the so-called Antwerp Six, who first showed their work collectively at London Fashion Week in the mid-1980s, Margiela is regularly categorised together with his fellow Belgian near-contemporaries (the most influential of the other six was Ann Demeulemeester, and the most commercially successful was Dries Van Noten). The Belgians all imbibed the earnest hard-working fashion aesthetic of their college, Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Art, developing outstanding technical skills coupled with a high seriousness in their approach to fashion design. Antwerp, at the heart of Flanders, was also the centre of a broader cultural boom, reflecting the rising confidence and dominance of the Dutch-speaking north of Belgium.
Margiela’s high seriousness was approved in France, where the conceptual approach to fashion design has always been respected. An exhibition staged in Rotterdam in 1997 featured a collaboration between the designer and a microbiologist. Margiela chose one outfit from the eighteen collections he had made to date, recreated in white, then sprayed with mould and yeast and allowed to grow. Another snapshot of Margiela’s approach: in spring 1998, he produced a collection full of flat garments inspired by the shape of plastic supermarket shopping bags. The seams were cut so that the clothes could lie flat, demonstrated in the show by men in white coats carrying around the clothes on hangers. A season later, he showed T-shirt dresses on ten life-size wooden puppets, with the folds heat-bonded to polythene vinyl. All this was a fashion conceptualist’s heaven. Likewise, the stores, usually in backstreet locations with no name above the door, have become cult locations. A recurring feature of the shops is a line of thrift store sofas and chairs, covered by one continuous white slipcover. Footprints on the white carpeting are stamped with one of Margiela’s signature Tabi boots dipped in black ink. The previous life of the store location is respected; thus, in Taipei, where Margiela opened in a former fast-food restaurant, the burger bar’s original fixtures were retained and simply painted white.
Martin Margiela was born in 1959 and grew up in Genk in the Limburg region of Flanders. After studying in Antwerp in the late 1970s (some years before Demeulemeester, Van Noten and Dirk Bikkem-bergs), he initially found work designing raincoats for a Belgian firm and then briefly worked in Italy. But Margiela’s heart was set on the higher planes of creativity and for him there was only one place to learn—Jean Paul Gaultier, the great iconoclast of Parisian fashion, who was at the peak of his influence in the mid-1980s. Margiela applied several times for work at Gaultier’s studio; sheer persistence eventually got him through the door. Margiela left Gaultier after three years to set up his own business with friend Jenny Meirens, who had run a boutique in Antwerp. The business was financed on a shoestring through well-paid commercial work for Italian manufacturers. For all the uncompromising aesthetic of his own label, Margiela was from the beginning a highly versatile designer, as was made clear a decade later in 1998 with his appointment as womenswear designer at the house of Hermès.
Margiela’s early collections instantly intrigued buyers from Europe’s more avant-garde stores, although few placed orders. His first collection featured the exceptionally narrow shoulder—Margiela called it the ‘cigarette shoulder’—which was a statement of defiance at a time when 1980s power dressing ruled. In October 1989, he caused a sensation by showing his collection on a rubble-strewn wasteland in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. The models stumbled down a makeshift catwalk with eyes painted white, wearing plastic dresses, papier mâché tops, jackets with the sleeves ripped off, skirts apparently made from lining materials and oversized men’s trousers. It was an experimental tour de force, making the mainstream shows of the Paris season seem blandly conventional. Geert Bruloot, owner of Louis, an Antwerp store, was an early supporter and friend: ‘It was a shock, but it was also a revelation. Margiela smelt what was coming, what was in the air. He was looking seasons ahead, taking the most everyday kind of clothes and showing new ways of wearing them.’ Other designers, such as Helmut Lang and Jean Colonna, were also presenting a challenge to the major fashion houses, following the challenge that Japanese designers such as Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto had presented several years earlier. The deconstructionist designer believed in showing precisely what he was doing, with hemlines unfinished, stitches visible and even the tailor’s markings retained. Fashion, he believed, was not an art—it was a craft, ‘a technical know-how’ for the wearer to explore and enjoy.
Drawing inspiration from flea markets or street style, Margiela would turn sometimes ordinary clothes into fashion by mixing and changing the shapes and fabrics. In the process, he challenged conventional ideas of what fashion could be, showing new ways of wearing familiar items. He also took little notice of the pressures of the modern fashion system to come up with new ideas every six months, preferring to refine and develop concepts over several seasons, revisiting garments aga
in and again. His autumn 1993 collection displayed the breadth of his influences and his willingness to acknowledge his sources, including a dress made from four black flea market dresses sewn together and a nineteenth-century priest’s coat that the designer liked so much he did not tamper with the original design. In 2001 cultural studies academic Rebecca Arnold argued that Margiela’s approach ‘undermined the notion of designer as unique, individual creator, by conceding that each design is the product of fashion’s history.’ She saw Margiela sharing the same spirit as Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo, recognising imperfection as ‘a route to authenticity … in contrast to fashion’s traditional role as the purveyor of ephemeral, perfect fantasies.’
By the early 1990s, the designer had already achieved an exceptional status, paradoxically fuelled by his reluctance to meet the fashion media, let alone give interviews. Innate shyness was certainly one reason for this. However, he also preferred people to look at his clothes rather than him. A statement from Maison Margiela said: ‘The withdrawal of a designer’s profile creates a space that the garments may fill.’ Back in March 1993 he briefly relented and invited a handful of journalists (including Roger Tredre) to his atelier on the boulevard Saint-Denis. Wearing his trademark navy blue peaked cap with black jeans and a black T-shirt, he explained why he was so media shy: ‘I wanted to express myself through the clothes, and consolidate in that way.’ The veil of secrecy was reimposed shortly afterwards, with interviews conducted by fax or email with the team rather than with Margiela the individual. The first Margiela label, a scrap of muslin inscribed with no name, no words, was in itself a statement questioning the modern designer system. From 1997, Margiela introduced a series of labels differentiated only by numbers.
Margiela has often preferred to present his clothes on real people rather than models. In an interview with The Independent newspaper in 1999, he and his team commented: ‘It remains … important for us that someone finds their way of dressing as opposed to a way of dressing as prescribed by anyone else or an overriding trend.’ All of the house’s collections are identified with a number system, from 0 to 22. At the top of the scale of numbers in price terms is number 4, a line of classic Margiela pieces. Number 1 is the fashion show collection, which is shown in Paris. Margiela’s arrival at Hermès in 1998 shocked both insiders and outsiders at the venerable French house. Hermès boss Jean-Louis Dumas had become aware of Margiela’s work through his daughter, an actress, who had modelled for the designer. Dumas invited him to lunch at his home in early 1997 and considered him ‘a good rider for a good horse,’ using equine terminology in keeping with the house’s tradition. His first show was a low-key kind of triumph, the Margiela iconoclasm tempered by his new role. The versatility of the clothing was a key note, including a coat that could be turned into a cape and seamless sweaters that could be worn inside out.
Writer Rebecca Mead, in a profile for The New Yorker, called them ‘quietly subversive. Stripped of all ostentation, they were to be valued from the inside, even if the wearer risked drabness.’ In 2003 Margiela was succeeded at Hermès by his onetime mentor, Jean Paul Gaultier.
Margiela’s long-time uncompromising approach did not translate into overnight business success. Development was slow and often difficult. His first store did not open until the year 2000, in Tokyo. Most of his stores were in hard-to-find locations with fascia that were only intelligible to the insider. Financial pressures recurred, hindering the development of the house. By 2002, the company found a sympathetic investor and kindred spirit in Renzo Rosso, owner of Diesel, Italy’s innovative denim brand. Rosso became a majority shareholder and replaced Jenny Meirens as president, helping to bankroll retail openings in key fashion cities, including London and New York. But Margiela and Meirens continued to run the business and make the creative decisions. ‘I love this man,’ Rosso said, promising a hands-off approach. ‘This is not an acquisition. I’m not buying a fashion company like other groups have done. I’m investing in Margiela so two friends can work together to grow a very special brand.’
The deal was a pivotal moment for Margiela’s business. After a low-key start to the new relationship, a period marked by heavy investment in shops and production, sales shot up in 2007 by 50 per cent to 60 million euros, driven by the designer’s popularity in Japan. Margiela moved into new territory, launching both a fragrance and jewellery. A shop was opened on Via Spiga, Milan’s celebrated fashion street. A new wave of professionalism swept through the company. That the business changed dramatically in character is not in doubt. Some voices suggested that Margiela was ‘selling out’, a charge rejected by Giovanni Pungetti, Margiela’s chief executive, in an interview in 2008. ‘The brand is exactly the same. It’s very, very close to what we bought six years ago.’
In fact, Margiela has become part of a larger experiment by Renzo Rosso to create an alternative kind of luxury fashion group for the twenty-first century. Margiela, together with designers Viktor & Rolf, who are also part of Rosso’s Only The Brave group, represents a wave that is unashamedly conceptual and serious minded. Rosso has said: ‘My dream is to represent a fresh, modern group for the future—I don’t look for establishment designers but someone with important creativity.’ In 2008, Margiela’s twentieth year in business, rumours circulated that the partnership was in trouble and that Margiela himself was considering retiring. But it was anniversary nonsense, put in its place by an exhibition held in Antwerp, titled simply Maison Martin Margiela, and by the energy of his spring/summer 2009 show, which featured models with their faces shrouded with stocking masks and tumbling hair. By early 2009, the house was exploring new opportunities in home decoration and hotel design.
As for the elusive Margiela himself, his lasting influence as a designer can be observed everywhere, including the denim sector, where the recycling and deconstruction of styles are well-established. A new generation of young designers, led most notably by Nicolas Ghesquière, has also drawn inspiration from his work. In the twenty-first century, when environmental issues of sustainability lend extra fuel to the vintage boom, Margiela may come to be seen as a true pioneer of a new way forward for fashion.
Further reading: Academic Rebecca Arnold makes interesting observations in Fashion, Desire and Anxiety (2001). Margiela was well profiled in ‘The Crazy Professor’ (1998) by Rebecca Mead for The New Yorker. WWD has reported his career thoroughly, not least through the writing of Paris editor Miles Socha. ‘Art versus Commerce: Can Margiela Expand Without Selling Out?’ (2 May 2008) explores the challenges for Margiela in recent years.
47 MARC JACOBS (1963–)
If you want to feel the pulse of modern fashion, then Marc Jacobs is invariably the best designer to turn to. Although his career has had its fair number of fashion missteps, no other designer has so consistently influenced the broader clothing market in the modern era, a period when fashion moves with oft bewildering speed from one extreme to another. To his critics, the American designer’s collections are dominated by too many pastiches of previous periods, particularly the 1970s, a decade to which he has returned time and time again. To his fans, including most fashion editors and many fashion industry professionals, he is the endlessly inventive New Yorker who has injected a fresh street-inspired spirit into designer fashion. Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue and a long-time admirer, highlights his knack for ‘making the conservative seem cool … and making the cool seem conservative.’
In a fashion world more competitive than ever before, Marc Jacobs is one of a very small group of designers to have survived the buffetings of building a label from scratch. He has established a status likely to ensure his longevity—with the potential to match American names such as Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. For that, the patronage of Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury conglomerate, has been critical. Although his celebrated grunge collection of 1993 established him as a designer with a street touch, the primary note of most of his work in the first decade of the twenty-first centu
ry has been a simple sense of elegance. Consider his collection of autumn/winter 2007, an homage to the Yves Saint Laurent of the 1970s, thoroughly grown-up and (like all of his clothes) eminently wearable. Marc Jacobs may not have created any striking new design innovations or silhouettes, but he has enthusiastically responded to the fast turnover of trends in the modern period and is the designer of his generation most copied by the international chain stores. Although considered by many of his supporters to be the ultimate downtown designer, in truth Marc Jacobs is uptown by origin, growing up in his grandmother’s apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Perhaps it is the fusion of uptown sophistication mixed with downtown youthful energy and street vibe that best explains his attraction to a wide cross-section of customers.
The full story of Jacobs’s childhood is shrouded in some mystery, but the bare facts are that his father, who worked at the William Morris talent agency, died when he was only seven; his mother remarried several times and spent time in various hospitals. The young Jacobs was brought up by his grandmother rather than his mother. Materially, he was comfortably off, although one can only guess at the psychological impact of losing a parent so young. His grandmother took him to New York department store Bergdorf Goodman and encouraged him in his interest in fashion. ‘One big thing she taught me was that quality was more important than quantity,’ Jacobs recalled many years later. Jacobs grew up fast, realising at an early age that he was gay, checking out copies of Playgirl magazine, but has spoken of his insecurity as a young man. At the age of just fifteen, his uncle, who was president of the same agency where Jacobs’s father had worked, arranged work experience for him in the company’s mail room. One of the agents, covering music, secured him guest-list entry to gigs: ‘I loved anything garagey rough—the Speedies, the Screams or Gang of Four,’ he recalled decades later in an interview with Rolling Stone. ‘I would get turned on by a band’s look first, and once I did, I found I actually liked the music.’ This love of music has remained a constant through his career.