?MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA - MOMU

Has it been 20 years already?
Martin Margiela, a darling of the fashion crowd for his high concept designs
and also enjoying commercial success with both is menswear and
womenswear line, celebrates 20 years of fashion with a unique
exhibition at the Antwerp Mode Museum (Fashion Museum) slated from Sep
12,2008 thru Feb 8, 2009.


Conceived in close collaboration with Maison Martin Margiela, the
exhibition which is simply entitled ?MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA, looks
deeply into the different themes and concepts that the designer has
explored during the 20 years of its various collections, fashion shows,
presentations and events worldwide, design of its shops and offices,
exceptional house style and communications policy.

Not your traditional retrospective, (after all, Martin Margiela was never
the traditionalist), the Paris-based designer also has created
exclusively for this exhibition several limited-edition items that will
be on sale during the entire exhibition at the Fashion Museum reception
desk. A catalogue in English will accompany the exhibition by M/M.

In October 1988, after graduating from the fashion department of the
Antwerp Academy and working as an assistant for Jean-Paul Gaultier,
Martin Margiela and Jenny Meirens established Maison Martin Margiela.

Their first pioneering fashion show followed in October of that same
year. Margiela?s was a radically new visual language, with a silhouette
long, with strikingly narrow shoulders, that diametrically opposed
the power dressing of the 1980s. He furthermore declines public
appearances.

Early in his career, Margiela emphatically decided to let his
fashion speak for itself. All interviews are consistently given in the
name of the Maison as a whole and no photographs of the designer are
distributed with a sharp reaction against the star status that dominated
the fashion scene of the 1980s and 1990s.


Maison Martin Margiela is especially known for its deconstructivist
approach and its use of secondhand materials or materials with low
commercial value. Its entire oeuvre is characterized by an exceptional
combination of classic tailoring and conceptual thinking.

Margiela shows the inside of a clothing item, exposes its
construction and focuses on that which fashion anxiously tries to
conceal. Unraveling the grammar of clothing, Maison Martin Margiela
reveals the strategies of the fashion system as it constructs something
radically new. The working method produces an analysis of the system
that underlies fashion and is followed through in the many varied
aspects of the fashion house.


MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA EXHIBITION
Dates: Friday, September 12, 2008, through Sunday, February 8, 2009

Time: Tuesdays through Sundays from 10AM to 6PM

Where: MOMU - Fashion Museum Province of Antwerp

Nationalestraat 28, 2000 Antwerp

Tel: +32 (0)3 470 27 70

Fax: +32 (0)3 470 27 71

Website: www.momu.be

SOURCE: STYLEZEITGEST