Maison Margiela began as a quiet rebuke to fashion’s obsession with personality and ego, founded in 1988 by the Belgian designer Martin Margiela and partner Jenny Meirens in Paris. From its first collection in 1989, the house presented clothes that felt less like status symbols and more like ideas.
The runway shows were unpredictable and raw. Models’ faces were often obscured so you looked only at the clothes. Early Maison Margiela shows took place in strange spaces and played with deconstruction, reclaimed materials, and visible seams that felt alive and unfinished. The brand continued without Maison Margiela, after he stepped away, other amazing creative directors have carried on the brand.
At Paris Haute Couture Week for Fall/Winter 2025/2026 the latest chapter of this story unfolded. Glenn Martens, who had been leading the house as creative director since earlier in the year, presented his first true couture Artisanal collection for Maison Margiela. Martens’s entrance was met with a mix of anticipation and quiet tension in the audience because Maison Margiela’s legacy is one of intelligent rebellion rather than simply aesthetic spectacle.
The venue was as thoughtful as the clothes. Instead of a typical bright runway space, the show took place in a room with layered, peeling walls that felt like a rediscovered palatial ruin. This set echoed the collection, which drew from the textures of 16th and 17th century Flemish interiors and Gothic imagery.
Models emerged under dim lights wearing looks that felt like cathedral sculptures sprung to life. Corsetry and draping shaped bodies into forms that were at once archaic and oddly futuristic. Some dresses looked like worn tapestries, others like relics newly excavated.
Martens’s vision for the collection was rooted in references most designers never dare to touch, yet he balanced that depth with a clear understanding of modern couture craft. Transparent trench coats and layered tulle whispered rather than shouted their presence. In striking contrast to the classical references, face coverings returned as a motif, a nod to the house’s foundation in anonymity and focus on clothing over celebrity.
This couture show did not lean on glamour in the way audiences are used to seeing at fashion week. Instead, it offered an almost monastic elegance. Crisp black and muted metallics dominated the palette, and when color appeared it was with the subtlety of fading fresco rather than brash statement.
The collection felt like a manuscript of texture and time bound together by exquisite technical skill, and yet every piece held an emotional pull because it asked viewers to think about what they were seeing. People who care about fashion—designers, editors, and longtime Maison Margiela devotees—sat in close study. Some appreciated the intellectual depth, others were visibly moved by the poetry of it all.
The runway did not feel like a parade of trends but like an intimate conversation between craft and imagination. The garments seemed to invite inspection rather than immediate praise, as though they were holding secrets rather than merely showing beauty.
There were celebrities present at the show. Cardi B arrived with her characteristic flair, trading the outrageous gowns she wore at other couture shows earlier in the week for a sleeker, tailored trench coat with bold gold earrings and a tipped beret that grounded her in classic Parisian spirit. Her presence confirmed that the pieces on display had resonance beyond fashion insiders and into the realm of popular culture.
Seated nearby were actors and voices from film and television who have embraced couture in recent seasons. Tessa Thompson and Dianna Agron brought understated yet sharp personal style, choosing ensembles that played with silhouettes and proportions in ways that harmonized with the avant-garde designs on the runway.
There was a sense that everyone preset understood something subtle was happening. This was not fashion as ornament. It felt closer to philosophy translated into cloth. Conversations after the show buzzed less about who was wearing what and more about how certain gowns felt like milestones in couture narrative.
Looking at the garments themselves, the construction was where many critics and aficionados found their fascination. The way pieces layered unexpected materials reflected Martens’s ability to honor Maison Margiela’s ethos while bringing his own voice to the house. Jackets had interiors that suggested histories, dresses seemed to hold stories folded deep within their pleats, and every piece felt tactile in a way that photographic images alone could not capture.
Even the masks worn by the models were not simply aesthetic props. They felt like statements. Some were made of metal, others of lace or plastic, each obscuring identity and reinforcing the idea that here the clothes held the narrative, not the face beneath them. It was a quiet insistence on craftsmanship as a form of presence, a reminder that couture is not only about surface beauty but about the conversation between maker, wearer, and viewer.
Critics who have followed Maison Margiela since its earliest days saw echoes of the house’s revolutionary beginnings. The choice to hide faces, to frame garments as sculptures of cloth and texture, and to invite viewers into a space that felt like a relic of history rather than a palace of commerce spoke truths about why the brand matters. It is a rare couture that resists easy admiration and instead demands engagement.
For fashion editors in attendance, this show was a reminder of why Paris Haute Couture remains vital. In a season crowded with spectacle, the Maison Margiela presentation stood apart because it offered depth rather than mere decoration. Reviewers online highlighted how certain looks seemed ready for a museum retrospective, while others felt ready to be worn into some future story yet unwritten.
After the runway, social media lit up with images of the collection and reactions from those who saw it firsthand. Clips of models in flowing gowns with ghostly drapes overlaid on dramatic masks circulated widely, with commentary praising the craftsmanship and the sheer inventiveness of the shapes. Couture lovers spoke of the collection in terms of experience rather than trend.
Some celebrities connected to the brand throughout the season showed how Maison Margiela’s influence now goes beyond the runway. Reports from red carpet appearances that followed the couture week noted that figures like Kim Kardashian had already been wearing pieces from the Maison Margiela’s collection in other high-profile settings, blending the runway’s thoughtful artistry with everyday celebrity culture.
