Reset
Image courtesy of MM6 Maison Margiela x Eastpak
By Fashion Week this February, the industry was approaching its second season since the pandemic took hold, a world turned on its head. Time enough to reflect on an industry reset—a new take on traditional shows, production practices, presentations, and collections.
Many designers appeared to embrace the chance to blend new mediums with their clothes to create a whole experience around them, one which was more than a runway. Some chose to create purely digital collections. Others decided to combine traditional runway with mind-shaping films, while others taught themselves 3D software or explored new production practises and reconsidered their environmental impact.
It was a period for designers' to re-examine creativity and the industry in ways they had not done previously. For some, a place of apprehension, but a place where MM6 Maison Margiela felt totally at home. The brand has always skilfully fused art, fashion, sculptural looks and thought-provoking concepts, playing with shape and ideas in a way that others dare not. So in many ways, this chance to rethink fashion, the idea of reinvention as a rebirth, of deconstructing to reconstruct, played perfectly into their artful hands.
“But that’s where the rules stopped; once you entered the venue’s heavy crimson curtains, fashion, music, and film as we know it, were transformed.”
The collection previewed this Sunday, Feb 28, its film part of Digital Fashion Week, created in-line with Covid-19 health and safety guidelines. But that's where the rules stopped; once you entered the venue's heavy crimson curtains, fashion, music, and film as we know it were transformed.
Shot on location at the Maison des Métallos in Paris's 11th arrondissement, MM6 took you back in time to old cabaret circa 1920, with dim lights and a stage surrounded by close observers looking on and applauding in admiration. As if we were in a world where orientation and time had no rules; music sped forwards and backwards, the film started and finished at the end with the word FIN in all its glitter-coated glory carrying you into MM6's world and showing you out.
And somewhere in between, along the low, dimly lit stage materialised a collection that celebrated the MM6 signature, its deconstructive exploration of shape, its playful but achingly cool aesthetic and a big dash of its mischievous humour. A world and a wardrobe turned on its head; clothes were inside out, upside down the wrong way round. Laundry labels flapped on garments' exteriors as models strutted. Seams were exposed; the front was the back, and bags were overturned. MM6 played on traditional cues of formality, as blouses became casualwear, and an inside out Jacquard knit became a tapestry. Bourgeois conventions of taste were playfully challenged with adornments and accessories like plastic grocery bags and casual pumps.
The inspiration came from across landscapes and times capes with cues from Duchamp to Warhol. Rebels and innovators united. And the film's soundtrack fused the notes of centuries; melding Erik Sati and mid-century composer John Cage to add to the disorientation. Rhythm, chords, modern and traditional met in soft sounds, then rich tones, racing forward and then rewound—ultra-modern acoustics for a fashion-forward brand.
The film was also a chance to debut the MM6 Maison Margiela x Eastpak collaboration. Once again, the designers challenged signature aesthetics, reimagining Eastpak's canvas backpack and bumbag, offering them in reversible designs. The collaboration pieces come in 3 colourways featuring transposed MM6 Maison Margiela and Eastpak labels.
MM6 Margiela is a favourite of ours, and this fusion of film and brands was a highlight of our AW21. A disarranged world has become the only one we know, so we take comfort in a collection that reflects our normality. But when it challenges our conventions in the form of a playful, engaging film, that ultimately makes us smile, we are sold. We sat, we watched, we didn't want the film to end. No 'FIN' for us MM6 - keep it coming.
The MM6 Maison Margiela x Eastpak collaboration will be available in stores from Sept 21.
All images courtesy of MM6 Maison Margiela x Eastpak