EXCERPT: MAISON MARGIELA ARTISANAL. SPRING 2024 COUTURE. PARIS

 

"...Galliano has maintained his dedicated presence for Maison Margiela Artisanal, redefining its Couture arrays, despite it not under his own name, his latest Spring 2024 collection is very much a Galliano showpiece.  Shown on the nether side of Alexandre III bridge in Paris, in a reflection of 1920s hedonism and the Avant-garde, which swept Europe after WW1.  Creating a charnelle cafés beneath the famous Parisian bridge, in homage to the Rive Gauche of yesteryear and all the restless spirits the have passed through, and if beaconed to return, they will do reluctantly; to haunt an already tumultuous world.  And this is where, like Anthony Vaccarello of Saint Laurent, who has been poking at the 1970s and 1980s hedonistic past, in some ways, showing very little respect to the many that have been lost, who had danced on the edge of oblivion.  And never returned.

If we are observers of history, we must show respect to those times by gently putting the past to rest.  So, the suffering of the bygone can be released.  But, more so in the West, we tend to want to relive and eviograte the phantoms as a spectacle, set against, in a arrogant disposition, our newfound technological wonders of a society that, in all reality, even as a sophisticated benchmark, has actually fallen apart.  Have we learnt from the turmoil of history?  And in this context, an ultimate question has to be asked.  Are we afraid of the new?

That despite COVID-19, a pandemic that did indeed reshape our society, in a hyperreal induced frenzy, we wanted everything back to normal.  Instead, it all went backwards, failing to learn from what nature, without consciously being aware of our presence, taught humanity a valuable lesson.  To be humble within our fragility...."

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Full Review:  chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2024/02/maison-margiela-artisanal-spring-2024.html

(A.Glass 2024)