MARGIELA, THE HERMÈS YEARS

Size : 240 x 300mm

hardcover

color, black and white

280 pages

published by LANNOO

This is a reprint in 2024 of the original catalog published to accompany the eponymous exhibition of Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela's work, held at MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp in Belgium from March to August 2017, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, France from March to September 2018, and at Artipelag contemporary culture center in Stockholm, Sweden from October 2018 to March 2019.

The exhibition and this book focus on the period from 1997 to 2003, when the artist served as the designer of women's ready-to-wear for the French luxury brand Hermès. This volume allows readers to enjoy numerous illustrations of the collections, image photos, and drawings from that era.

The artist's innovations in tailoring, technique, and materials, as well as his new fashion perspective that emphasized comfort, timelessness, and tactility, created clothes whose primary purpose was to delight the wearer, rather than to impress the viewer. Furthermore, the portrayal of women embraced women of various ages rather than obsessing over youth, thereby creating a new vision of beauty.

Through interviews with the artist's closest collaborators, extensive essays contributed by Rebecca Arnold, an expert in dress and textile history, Kaat Debo, curator at MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp, and fashion journalist Sarah Mower, as well as a preface by journalist and fashion critic Suzy Menkes, this important period in 20th and 21st-century fashion is evoked. Untold stories of the artist's supreme wardrobe created for Hermès are woven together through unpublished materials from the Maison Martin Margiela archives, numerous striking and exquisitely refined images taken from Le Monde d'Hermès, the quarterly magazine published by Hermès for its customers, and newly added photographic materials.