It was immediately clear to us upon arrival that Antwerp is city that oozes class and modernism. Artistic intelligence is literally everywhere you look, even Antwerp’s central station is a truly amazing architectural feat. Kings Cross seems like a poor imitation in comparison to the beautiful modernist belgian levels of trains on top of trains.
Suffciently in awe of the city not to mention delighted by its thousands of varieties of beer we decided some culture was in order and headed through streets of wonderful shops, including those of the Antwerp six, and this amazing dvd rental shop to MoMu, the fashion museum to see the Martin Margiela exhibition.
On walking in to the exhibition after getting our tickets at the caravan reception we are greeted by a strange white pop-up Styrofoam audience. It transpires that this is in fact a group portrait of the Martin Margiela team of Paris. Margiela’s own silhouette is however not included. No fashion designer works alone and in shunning any kind of personal publicity (he has never been publicly photographed and you certainly won’t see him take a bow after a catwalk show) Margiela is one of the only designers to make this fact clear, separating him from others who are anxious to take credit and ownership of work that has been created by many people. It is obvious that Margiela isn’t in fashion for glory or fame, rather to set about the wonderful business of creation.
The exhibition goes to great lengths to recreate the artists working space and ideas. This white cotton covered furniture can be found both in Margiela’s Paris offices and In the exhibition where the chairs form a circle facing outwards in the middle of a room with walls full of films. We sat for over an hour in them completely absorbed in watching videos of catwalk shows, milk bottles, lamps, eggs and whiter than white object montages.
Margiela doesn’t do things by the book, par example le plate-invitation! And in his next collection he shattered the plates and made them into waistcoats.
In a dark room bodices were lit up one by one, cleverly focusing your attention on one garment at a time, including this one adorned with square mirror tiles.
Printed below the outfits are the length of time it took to make them, the emphasis on the working processes behind the clothes makes the exhibition that bit more interesting and different to others on designers that focus purely on final outcomes. Margiela is interested in the ‘life history’ of garments and this exhibition was superb in showing his interest in making the production processes public, thereby showing that the true value of the pieces can be found in the time and energy it took to make them.
This amazingly comfy duvet-coat had different bedspread patterns projected onto it.
In short I heart Antwerp, I heart belgian beer, and I heart Martin Margiela.
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