Review of MM6 Maison Margiela

Fall 2022


Review of MM6 Maison Margiela Fall 2022 Fashion Show

Everyday Surrealism

By Mark Wittmer

With its Fall 2022 collection, MM6 twists historic Margiela codes and quotidian dressing with a subtly surreal exploration of reinvention, hiddenness, and presence.

Moving away from the unscrolling chessboard tops and frilly neck ruffles of the last collection that made us feel we had fallen down some sort of rabbithole in the Parisian streets, this collection felt firmly grounded in everyday reality. This is the kind of clothing we see pass by on the streets everyday, yet subtly reimagined with playfulness and intellect: boxy blazers are subverted with campily wide lapels and cinched waists, trucker jackets and tank tops lent a sense of utilitarian and casual cool, leather bags are precise, angular, minimal.

A playfully punk spirit of subversion peeks through in the subtle fetish references or colorful splashings of rhinestone embellishments, as well as some of the color choices – forest green, sherbet peach, and soft lilac – that we don’t really see anyone else doing right now.

Again, instead of last season’s obvious visual references, this collection brought MM6’s signature sense of conceptuality and surrealism through subtle technical innovations – most notably the slicing off of pieces’ sleeves and backs and replacing it with, well, nothing at all. The front-forward runway photographs of course can’t do them justice, but this looks featured an intriguing new consideration of negative space as a positive presence.

There was still some reference through pattern and graphics to extra-fashion conceptual, serpentine imagery in the form of the snakeskin print, the boa boa, and the ouroboros (the snake eating its own tail) graphical elements.

The theme of eternal return suggested by the Ouroboros visual motif as well as the deck of cards, aptly illustrate the MM6 ethos. Like the snake’s endless self-consumption or the deck of cards’ staggeringly astronomical possibilities of ordering, MM6 mines codes from both Margiela’s vintage archives and from aesthetic culture in general to present us with something surreal and new that grows out of the familiar. MM6 sheds its skin, but always remains its very cool self.