As Martin Margiela quoted; ‘For us our ‘artisanal production’ (for men and womens garments they may be identified by the 0 (zero) encircled on their label), as we have said here, we rework existing garments, fabrics and objects to recreate new garments and accessories. We first adopted this approach for our inaugural collection for Spring/Summer 1989 and it has been an integral and important element of each and every one of our collections since’.
Margiela and the team ruthlessly searched through Parisian flea markets to find vintage garments looking forward to giving them purpose, reworking existing garments, fabrics and objects to recreate new garments and accessories.
Here we see a finer example of the artisanal line for me, using a 1970s military jacket and reworking the piece completely. Stitches have been added to the jacket to leave the feeling there was once one there, the epaulettes have been crudely cut off and a shortened and slimmed silhouette has been created. Irregular stitching has been purposely used throughout the reworking process and finally a garment has been overdid and washed to leave a severe vintage look.
