At MM6 Maison Margiela, The Factory meets Studio 54

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Feb 19, 2018

An Andy Warhol moment from a Belgian brand, based in Paris in an old English pub named the Running Horse, hired for two days for a two-hour show of MM6, the diffusion line of Maison Margiela.

 
Like the interior of Warhol’s famed Factory on Union Square West in New York, the entire public house was covered in silver. From the wainscoting and the leather couches to the Edwardian clock and the all the way to the bar taps. 
 
As indeed was the entire collection: silver surfer down jackets; rocker dandy blazers; shiny shearling flight jackets and Inter-galactic space travel puffers.

The design team even riffed on the classic Margiela DNA, since the founder Martin did love a mirrored check. Case in point, a mannish pantsuit and western boots in his preferred malleable disco ball material. Cloven toed boots, of course, in liquid silver too. Party frocks in lustrous plissé lambskin; gloves in silvery chain mail.  Everything based on items from the Margiela archives.
 
Except – in a neat twist – that guests circulated with Polaroid cameras, whose photos could be placed inside transparent pockets of five looks.
 
Editors and hipsters crammed inside, and with 500 fans waiting outside patiently for entry on a chilly Sunday night in Mayfair. The latest iteration of the work of performance art that is every Margiela show or event.
 
In a season where it was often impossible to know when any of the clothes would actually be seen on a boutique shelf or an e-commerce site, it was good to know that these will start retailing in September.
 
The bar was first opened in 1738, Warhol debuted his Factory in 1962, yet somehow this autumn-winter collection just felt very now.