With his debut at Maison Margiela during Paris Fashion Week 2025, Glenn Martens pushed the house’s legacy forward through dramatic silhouettes, haunting masks, and powerful reuse.
By Dara Clariza Evangelista
Glenn Martens’s first Maison Margiela collection at Paris Fashion Week 2025 redefined the house’s signature codes with gothic beauty and bold reinvention.
A graduate of Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, just like Martin Margiela himself, Martens is known for his sculptural, deconstructed approach to fashion. After a successful 11-year run at Y/Project and his ongoing role at Diesel, he was officially named creative director of Maison Margiela in January 2025. His Fall 2025 Artisanal show, held at Le Centquatre in Paris, marked the beginning of this new chapter, and showed exactly why he was trusted with one of fashion’s most iconic houses.
It’s difficult to see something we’ve never seen before, but Martens managed just that. Drawing from Margiela’s core themes of anonymity, transformation, and upcycling, he reimagined them through his own lens. Masks, long a Margiela symbol, were central—appearing in lace, sequins, crushed metal, and even as spoon-shaped headpieces. Some were faceless, others ornamental, but all were essential to the identity of the looks.
The garments followed the same philosophy. Martens opened the show with sculptural PVC gowns and distressed leather pieces, followed by crushed velvet dresses, upcycled denim feathers, and bodycon silhouettes printed with vintage wallpaper motifs. The materials—thrifted socks, costume jewelry, discarded fabrics, were repurposed and reassembled into couture, staying true to the house’s Artisanal ethos.
The set design echoed this theme: crumbling paper-covered walls gave the venue a haunted, lived-in feeling. Inspiration was drawn from medieval architecture, Flemish art, and stately interiors peeling with time, an elegant reflection of beauty in decay.
This wasn’t just a tribute to the brand’s past. It was Martens’s bold step forward. He honored the legacy while firmly establishing his voice: emotional, inventive, and unafraid. With this powerful debut, Glenn Martens has made it clear, Maison Margiela isn’t just back. It’s reborn.
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