Ultimate Maison Martin Margiela Archive Sale
Martin Margiela puts 200 pieces from his personal archives up for auction
“On July 9 in Paris, personal items and prototypes from the famously secretive designer will be auctioned. By personally initiating and organizing the sale, Martin Margiela, who left the fashion world in 2008, is offering a glimpse into his creative process. It is a radical gesture that mirrors his artistic journey.
In a giant warehouse in early June, far from the bustle of Paris, dozens of raw wooden crates towered up to the ceiling. Inside this labyrinth, an entire chapter of fashion history had just arrived. There were small dressed Stockman mannequins still wrapped in bubble wrap; Barbie dolls preserved in tissue paper; and cardboard boxes filled with sketches, prototypes, lookbooks and personal mementos. A stained blouse. Tabi boots covered in graffiti. Working objects, traces of an idea.
A 1988 Maison Martin Margiela prototype veil mask is now up for auction through @mauriceauction with @kerrytaylorauctions.
The piece is made from white cotton voile, with pencil correction marks still visible at the sides and white cotton ties attached. It sits on a white painted mannequin head and comes from Martin Margiela’s personal archives.
Margiela described the veil as an idea he had from the beginning: covering the model’s entire face so attention moved fully to the clothes. Without the face, the body became more abstract. The garment had to do the work.
Nearly 200 pieces have been brought together to trace Martin Margiela's entire career, from his beginnings in Antwerp in 1984 to his retirement from fashion in 2008. Even more strikingly, an entire clothing rack, carefully preserved under a cover, holds rare Hermès designs from the private wardrobe of the designer's mother, whom he dressed in clothes and accessories while he oversaw the house's women's ready-to-wear line from 1997 to 2003.
To everyone's surprise, the designer behind one of contemporary fashion's most radical and acclaimed bodies of work, and a man who has shown a rare desire to remain out of the spotlight, decided to personally organize the auction of part of his private archive. The sale will take place on July 9 in Paris. "It's a first: Never before has a living fashion designer taken part in the dispersal of their own legacy in this way," said Salomé Pirson, the auctioneer and co-founder of Maurice Auction, the Paris-based auction house organizing the event in collaboration with Kerry Taylor Auctions, the London-based specialist in vintage and haute couture fashion sales.”
