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On a still-warm Paris day last October, sunlight streamed through the vaulted glass ceiling of the Centquatre, an arts centre in the 19th arrondissement, where guests had gathered for Glenn Martens’ first ready-to-wear show for Maison Margiela. A former funeral parlour, completed in the late 1800s, the vast main hall had been transformed for the occasion: sheathed in trompe l’oeil white curtains and lined with benches – themselves wrapped in white fabric – the scene included a 61-piece orchestra, at that point empty of its players (this was also rendered in white, from its music stands to a dramatic grand piano, a nod to house founder Martin Margiela’s favoured hue). Such was the piercing brightness, many of the attendees kept on their sunglasses or simply squinted into the light.
Then arrived the orchestra: a merry band of children, clutching instruments and clad in ill-fitting suits, some so large that the hemlines dragged along the ground like the train of a dress. They played with gusto, blasting through classical music’s greatest hits – from the booming Sunrise fanfare from Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 – as models, lips prised open with metal mouthpieces, began to parade around the space. The sound was deliriously off-key and out of time, but the children were charming (hailing from Romilly-sur-Seine and aged seven to 15, they are part of Orchestre à l’École, which turns local classrooms into orchestras; some had been learning for just a few months).
Ananda wears coat £3,050; leggings, £430; shoes, £1,040; earrings £1,700 (enquire maisonmargiela.com)
There is a famous photograph of Martin Margiela’s S/S 1990 runway show, held in 1989 in an abandoned playground in Paris’ 20th arrondissement, then largely populated by North African immigrants. In it, smiling local children scamper among models’ feet as guests crouch – some visibly open-mouthed at the spectacle – along the runway. These days, it has become commonplace for designers to seek out obscure settings for their shows, but back then, it was a bold riposte to the glossy, amped-up offerings of the 1980s; its uneven floor, free-for-all seating and improvised electrics (the Margiela team begged those in surrounding apartments to allow them to plug in cables for lights and music) a far cry from the gilded hotel ballrooms typical of the era’s fashion weeks.
It was a reason, perhaps, for the scathing reviews that followed in the press, but for many in the room – including some of the next generation of fashion designers, like Raf Simons, who had snuck in – it was a revolution. ‘Martin’s was the first show I ever attended,’ Simons said in 2016. ‘I was so struck by everything I was seeing that I started to cry. I felt so embarrassed. I was like, “Look at the ground, look at the ground, everyone’s going to see you’re crying”. Like, how stupid to be crying at a fashion show. Then I looked around, and half the audience was crying.’
Constance wears coat, £6,620; trousers, £4,730; shoes, £1,230 (enquire maisonmargiela.com)
‘I wanted to do something democratic,’ says Martens, noting that, when it comes to ready-to-wear, he wants to do something real – ‘never precious’. The children’s orchestra was part of that: after all, Maison Margiela – or Maison Martin Margiela, as it was first founded by its namesake designer and business partner Jenny Meirens – has never been about perfection. Martin Margiela’s most memorable designs were those that had been torn apart at their seams or turned inside out; daubed with paint or constructed from disparate found objects, from broken plates to old butcher’s aprons. At both Y/Project – where Martens was for 11 years – and Diesel, where he is creative director, he has favoured a similar irreverence. For his S/S26 collection for Diesel, models were scattered in plastic ‘eggs’ around Milan; fabrics came from intriguing experiments in mixing satin and denim, or bonded jersey, purposely cracked and broken across its surface.
‘In Belgium, it is always raining, but they still walk to a restaurant in their fanciest clothes and big boots. They drink wine out of a plastic cup. It doesn’t mean they are not beautiful’
Glenn Martens
Martens thinks there is something Belgian about this approach. Martin Margiela was born in Genk in Belgium’s east, Martens in Bruges in the west; both ended up studying at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts (the institution also birthed the Antwerp Six, which would put Belgian fashion on the map). ‘In Belgium, it is always raining, but they still walk to a restaurant in their fanciest clothes and big boots, never taking a taxi,’ says Martens. ‘They drink wine out of a plastic cup; they are so not precious. It doesn’t mean they are not gorgeous and beautiful, but they are still going to walk their dog around the park.’ It was a mood he sought to encapsulate with the S/S 2026 collection, described as ‘a series of concepts and proposals for real life’ in the press notes. ‘So even with the really beautiful gowns, I want them to feel a bit off. It’s about reality.’
Asher wears coat, £3,050; top, £1,660 (enquire maisonmargiela.com)
The S/S 2026 ready-to-wear collection was not the first collection that Martens had designed for Maison Margiela, or indeed shown: last July, he presented an Artisanal collection (the equivalent to other houses’ haute couture lines) during Haute Couture Week, which marked his debut proper. Held in the basement of the Centquatre, where peeling trompe l’oeil wallpaper evoked the faded grandeur of country manor houses – as if models had been dragged through the tattered walls of time – the collection was one of strange, undone opulence, drawing inspiration from the architecture of medieval Flanders. Billowing gowns were rendered in molten metallic organza, while Renaissance-inspired jacquards and leather embossed with motifs from 16th-century Flemish wallpaper were patchworked together. Finally, each look came with a mask – some embellished with crystals, others in hammered metal – a nod to a Margiela principle (masks featured throughout Martin Margiela’s collections, while the designer refused to reveal his own face).
Martens had furiously drawn the collection before he had even been confirmed in the role (though he was hotly tipped to be next in line). ‘I wanted to own that moment, so I designed everything completely myself,’ he says, noting that usually a collection will be formed through discussion with his design team. ‘So when I started, I came to the office with a full line-up: all the reference pictures, all the colours, all the fabric treatments. I needed to feel that the success or failure was mine and not somebody else’s.’
He would sign the final contract just a few weeks later in a service-station Burger King, driving back from a weekend spent renovating his country house near Paris. Not long after, Renzo Rosso, chairman of the OTB Group, which owns Maison Margiela, made the announcement (the OTB Group is also the owner of Diesel, so Martens and Rosso’s relationship is longstanding). ‘I have worked with Glenn for years, I have witnessed his talent, and I know what he is capable of,’ Rosso said.
Kate wears dress, £3,690; necklace, £950 (enquire maisonmargiela.com)
With the appointment came the inevitable weight of expectation. Only two named designers have preceded him at Maison Margiela: the eponymous founder, and John Galliano, an industry titan whose theatrical shows for Dior have become fashion lore. The latter was at Maison Margiela from 2014-2024, a period defined by critically lauded runway shows that gleefully clashed Margiela tropes with Galliano’s own penchant for historical grandeur and voracious storytelling. Martens admits he was a tough act to follow, particularly after Galliano’s final Artisanal show in 2024. ‘It was celebrated as one of the best haute couture collections of all time, so it’s hard to come into the house after that,’ he says. ‘But on the other hand, you have everybody saying that you are perfectly matched for the role. So there was a lot of expectation.’
‘When I started, I came to the office with a full line-up: all the reference pictures, colours, fabric treatments. I needed to feel that the success or failure was mine and not somebody else’s’
Glenn Martens
Nonetheless, his own Artisanal collection garnered wide acclaim from critics (‘Glenn Martens has come to save us,’ read the headline for Tim Blanks’ Business of Fashion review), as well as on social media – though, as with any high-profile debut, there was also spirited debate. ‘Some people were hating on it, but then others were saying it was fantastic, and everybody has something to say, even some 17-year-old TikTok influencer,’ says Martens. ‘So after the show, I took myself to my little house in the countryside and locked myself away for five days, trying not to think about it.’
He has since learned to largely avoid social media, though he is gratified when people find ways to tell him how much they love what he is doing. And he has no regrets. ‘It wasn’t a shy collection. If you do something loud, then of course you put yourself in the position of getting loud criticism back. With social media, it’s a learning process. I’m definitely maturing.’
Kate wears coat, £5,200; trousers, £1,560; bag, £1,890 (enquire maisonmargiela.com)
After the Artisanal collection, the ready-to-wear felt something of a relief for Martens – a shift in focus from the fantastical to the real. ‘It’s nice to be in a house that has both,’ he says. ‘I can have these moments where I design for the pure sake of creativity and beauty, but I don’t have the urge to do these crazy artistic things in my ready-to-wear.’ So in that first ready-to-wear collection, as the young orchestra made their way through the classical greats, Martens presented a roll-call of Margiela hits of his own, influenced by the archive but with his own signature irreverence. Like those mouthpieces: reminiscent of the house’s four-stitch motif, they were a little kinky, a little weird, very Glenn. Clothes riffed on eveningwear in undone style: tuxedo jackets were worn with torn shirts beneath, while the looping neckline of a waistcoat informed the cut of outerwear. Fabrics, as ever, were an intriguing collage: tough swathes of leather met energetic collages of sequins and crystal embroidery, while the final dress appeared wrapped in plastic supermarket shopping bags – a Martin Margiela-esque gesture.
‘It’s a blessing to me that this house has ready-to- wear – I want people to wear Margiela,’ says Martens. ‘I want my staff to wear it on the street, and even if [in the show] there’s a bit of a set, or hair and make-up, at its core it’s about reality. To me, that’s very close to Martin’s founding principles – he was really creating clothes that were ready to wear.’
Constance wears coat, £6,620 (enquire maisonmargiela.com)
At the end of the show, the young orchestra took a rapturously applauded bow, but Martens himself did not emerge through the curtain to receive his own ovation. This is to do with tradition: as one of the house’s values is anonymity, and Martin Margiela did not reveal his own identity, subsequent creative directors have also eschewed the traditional runway bow. It might not be something that Martens himself is yet fully on board with: a recent H&M collaboration, which largely riffed on his hallmark pieces at Y/Project, saw the designer undertake a multi-city tour, including a trip to London that featured a press junket on the top deck of a bus (most of the collection sold out online within minutes, so it worked). In life, at least, he is – slowly – learning to step back from work.
‘When I first started at Diesel, I would do all-nighters, and was just constantly busy with my job. But now that I’m 42, I’m a bit better,’ he says. Much of the distraction comes from Murphy, a border terrier gifted to him by his Y/Project team when he left the brand. ‘The moment I come home, he just takes all the attention. If he wasn’t there, I’d probably still just be working all night.’ Nevertheless, he says, with a smile, that people in his life still protest that he doesn’t give them enough attention. ‘At both Diesel and Maison Margiela, they are always complaining that I am not there enough; and all the people in my private life say the same. But I am learning to juggle.’
Asher wears jacket, £3,500; trousers, £1,560; shirt, £1,620; boots, £1,790 (enquire maisonmargiela.com)
Ultimately, he says he sees little point in complaining – he has ended up exactly where he wanted to be. ‘I’m blessed to be working at a job, and in an industry, that I still have a passion for. There aren’t many people who can say that their job is their passion. I’ve never complained about going to the office in the morning – it’s a joy ride.’
A version of this story appears in the March 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available from 5 February in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today
Kate wears dress, price on request (enquire maisonmargiela.com)
Models: Ananda, Constance and Asher at Girl Management, Kate at HMM Paris, Cyprien at Select Model Management. Casting: Lisa Dymph Megens at Industry Art . Hair: Rimi Ura at Calliste. Make-up: Laure Dansou at WSM using Saie. Local producer: Clara Perrotte. Photography assistant: Arthur Jung. Fashion assistant: Jaime Butel. Hair assistant: Yui Hirohata. Make-up assistant: Inès Jegham. Production assistants: Jenna Florio, Gillian Bourgeois. Retouching: Lasso Studio.