We can't say that we didn't see this coming. It was only about time for Maison Margiela to take on a genderless stance. This is, after all, the esteemed fashion house that's all about subverting norms and challenging the way we view fashion design and construction. But as creative director John Galliano explains in a podcast (did you know that Maison Margiela has a podcast channel too?), "I’m not trying to make girls look like boys and boys look like girls; that’s not my interest here."
In episode three of the 'THE MEMORY OF… With John Galliano' podcast series, Galliano talks about how he's inspired by the spirit of Generation Z for Maison Margiela's spring/summer 2019. According to Galliano, it's the constant revolt and act of questioning everything, that has got him to further experiment and explore with the idea of garments being more than what they could potentially be.
"The idea is to try and incorporate the very concept of transformation into cutting. The idea from the Artisanal [collection] and through our exploration of nomadic glamour, and I had the surprise and the chance to come across the idea that a garment could be nomadic," Galliano says.
This "nomadic" theme ran throughout the collection and was interpreted in a few different ways. Galliano quite literally moved a skirt—normally worn around the waist, of course—to the shoulders and deconstructed garment to form a cape. This was evident in looks 1 and 3. And in some (as in looks 15 and 16), they were transformed into dresses. In true co-ed form, the clothes were transformative too, seemingly moulding and draping on each body regardless of the gender of the model they were on.
Towards the end of the podcast episode, Galliano sums it all rather succinctly: Create the rules; break the rules to create the rules. Generation Z indeed.
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