Maison Margiela, the fashion house founded in Paris in 1988 by the Belgian designer Martin Margiela and Jenny Meirens, unveiled its Artisanal 2025 collection on Wednesday, July 9th, 2025. The show was the first of its kind since the Belgian fashion designer Glenn Martens took over as Margiela’s creative director from John Galliano.
For this debut, Martens and his team have skillfully crafted a collection that homages Margiela’s and his new creative director’s shared Belgian roots. This Artisanal collection incorporated the distinct aesthetic and thematic identity the avant-garde brand is famous for, and reinterpreted it through a sculptural, ceremonial celebration of materiality and craftsmanship.
Maison Margiela Artisanal 2025 – Focused on the craft and inspired by Northern European Art History
The Maison Margiela’s Artisanal 2025 collection transported viewers into a space that was both surrealist and grounded in the visually rich world of the Flemish and Dutch artistic tradition.
Towers and the statues of saints and biblical figures that adorn the sculpted façades of Gothic churches, like the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, inspired the vertical, statuesque lines of the designs; the use of corsets, three-dimensional forms, anatomical draping, and optical illusions balanced out the verticality.
The sculptural, historical feel of the collection was mirrored and enhanced by the scenography created by Sub Sound. For the show, they printed images sourced from six palatial interiors, ranging from stuccos to frescos, and black and white checkered floors on paper. Then, they arranged them in dark, evocative collages of historical textures that brought the look and feel of Northern European Renaissance houses to the show through Margiela’s trademark material deconstruction and surrealist approach.
The fashion show exuded a mystical, otherworldly atmosphere, reminiscent of the science fiction landscapes and interiors found in the works of Surrealist painter Remedios Varo. Varo is an artist known for her eclectic use of different traditional techniques. She created deeply personal and surreal worlds where natural and architectural elements merged in dreamlike spaces.
An homage and re-imagination: unassuming materials and anonymity
For his debut at Margiela, Martens has fully utilized the Surrealist potential of a signature aspect of the fashion house’s aesthetic identity: the mask. The various teams at Maison Margiela have explored the theme of anonymity through the mask as a means to spotlight the craft since the brand’s debut runway Spring/Summer 1989.
In last year’s viral Artisanal Collection, the masks were understated and Futuristic. For the 2025 collection, Martens chose to give this Margiela staple a rawer, Gothic twist.
This year, all the models sported an array of textured face coverings crafted out of unexpected and repurposed materials such as burnished and compressed metal boxes, three-dimensional flowers, sculpted plastic, lace, and discarded crystal costume jewelry.
The use of such unusual materials was the star of the show, another element of the brand’s signature aesthetic. The skillful demonstration lies behind those who managed to take something so unassuming and transform it into haute couture. The trompe l’oeil of the hand-painted pieces in the collection was inspired by the brushstrokes from the works of nineteenth-century French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau. In yet another clever homage to historical crafts, pictures of Renaissance Flemish hand-painted embossed leather floral wallpapers were printed and stonewashed to mimic the look of embossment and fabric prints.
In a season characterized by transitions at several influential fashion houses, the Margiela show reminded us of what fashion can be: a polyhedric art form brought to life first and foremost by the artisans who stitch it together.
