Part of the specific challenge with Maison Margiela, he continues, is just how influential the founder’s thinking became across all of fashion. “I myself am one of those children of the Margiela generation. And I think Martin is more than a designer, he is a school that has changed a lot of people’s thinking… The Japanese were a bit before, but I think in Europe it was Martin who made this change, this thought that garments don’t have to follow a classic structure. It was trying to find a different way of looking at beauty, of looking at construction and looking at fashion at large. And this has been a design ethos for so many designers since, some of them more directly and some of them less so. I have always been someone, I think quite clearly, who has followed that way of thinking.”
Which leads to questions of originality, ownership and identity. Martens laughs again as he recounts the sometimes creatively confronting nature of his deep dive into the Margielian world. “When I arrived here, I asked my stylist to bring out all of Martin’s archive pieces. Because I had always only ever seen them in books. And finally, seeing the real items, I was so disappointed in myself. I was like: ‘My God, I just copied everything before when I was at Y/Project!’”
If Martens’s 13-year output as creative director at that Parisian indie label was unconsciously saturated by Margiela’s influence, there are some who have taken a far more premeditated approach to incorporating his new house’s creative canon. “Margiela has been a source to so many designers and brands, some more literally than others,” he says. “I love this house for its founding DNA, but definitely a lot of that DNA has been fully plundered; literally plundered, this is the best word for it. Reclaiming some of these elements, trying to reclaim them with elegance, and finding my own way to work through them is what I want to do.”
Another factor for Martens to calculate is the enormous contribution to the house from John Galliano, who served as creative director from October 2014 to December 2024. Martens says: “I love everything he has done here… John is a genius in couture. He created his own fantastic world, and the product was very much linked to it. I could never be John; I am not such a good storyteller.” Galliano arrived at Margiela three years after the end of his 13-year stint at Christian Dior, where he had created some of the most opulent and narratively expressive couture shows fashion has ever seen. His unique articulation of that apex house of mainstream French luxury was duly refracted through his work at Maison Margiela.
This, Martens implies, offers him a distinct route forward as he plots his path. He says: “I think in the days of Martin this world was much more niche. The luxury was more about the exclusivity of it through an independent way of thinking. Now, it is also about the craftsmanship and the tailoring: John brought that in and we need to continue building it, because it is part of the development of this house.”