John Galliano has left the building. There will be no follow-up to his triumphant, transporting January couture, a fashion show that captured the world’s attention like absolutely no other. He exits Maison Margiela at his creative peak, proud, hopeful for the brand’s future, and content. “The challenge we set ourselves—the results of it have been to build up on the DNA that Martin left the house. It’s really the blood that courses through our creative veins and a possible blueprint,” he says. Over the decade he spent at the label, Galliano devised an internal glossary of terms for the specifics of his techniques—techniques like décortiqué (to strip something of its outer layers) or reclica (which expands on the concept of Replica formerly used by the house to brand reproductions of vintage finds). The list goes on, call it an Artisanalogy. These were ideas grounded in Margiela’s foundational work, but they could only have come from the genius hands of Galliano. And now, he says, “they’re there, they’re there for life—as inspiration.” Here, he reflects on some of the indelible moments he created—on the runway, for celebrities, and in the pages of Vogue.

2015, Appropriating the Inappropriate

The first Maison Margiela Artisanal collection was a collection of intent. It was after a wonderful tea I had with Martin [Margiela], where he said, “take what you will from the DNA of the house, protect yourself, and make it your own.” You know, how I am, with the research that I would have to do, but to have the source, the founding father of Maison Margiela, sitting opposite me, who was very generous with his time and his recollections and the philosophy behind the label—boy, did I luck out. It really did tip the balance for me. Doubts I had—whether I was the right person, whether I could do it—after that sentence, I thought, I think I can try this.

Maison Margiela, Fall 2015—Dressing in Haste

Along with defining codes of the house, I was trying to develop a Margiela attitude for the girls. This was when you first saw that walk with a character in mind. She’s dressed in haste, which is a technique through which familiar spontaneous gestures are freeze-framed in the cuts and styling of garments and accessories. It is the unconscious glamour of slipping into a t-shirt, pulling on a coat, or going out in rubber kitchen gloves.

Artisanal Fall 2015—The Bourgeois Gesture

Bourgeois cutting is a way of capturing in cutting or styling the blasé movements and signals associated with a mid-century bourgeois fashion mentality and approach to the art of dressing.

Maison Margiela Artisanal, Spring 2016; Maison Margiela, Fall 2016; Maison Margiela Artisanal, Fall 2016; Maison Margiela Artisanal, Fall 2017

Far left: A work-in-progress. It’s about the magical, unfinished moments that happen during the process of the work. I think we also called it “ripped to reveal.” It’s almost like you ripped the outer layer to reveal the dress that’s morphing through. Near left: I wove a little story around her, Madame le Pigeon. She finds herself sitting on a park bench with her lover. I think they’ve been together for, like, I don’t know, nearly 100 years, and she’s looking through her compact, which is smashed, and reminiscing, and seeing her life through fragments—a story of love. I imagined that she stood up—it would have been like a park bench that you find in Hyde Park—and as she gets up to walk, her lover notices that there’s these huge white stripes painted across the back of her coat, in a very primitive way, because the pair of them had unconsciously sat on a bench that had just been freshly painted. An example of unconscious glamour. Near right: I collaborated for the first time at Margiela with an artist here: Benjamin Shine. Through a process of tweaking, pleating, and tucking he produced that smoky, haunting face—like cigarette smoke almost. He didn’t really sew anything; it’s all coaxed into place with an iron. Then we had to catch everything down onto the dress coat. To transfer that, you had to be like magicians. It’s all rapport, in the true sense of couture. Far right: The idea is that this little Fair Isle could have been a hand-me-down from grandpa to… on and on and on. And each person it was handed down to would have spontaneously customized it.

Katy Perry at the 2017 “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between” Met Gala

It’s a man’s coat cut away to the spine and you can see the underdress coming through—the blooms and the tulle. Katy had an album coming out and we embroidered its name, Witness, on her veil, with the eye slightly hovering over her own eye. We were doing a lot of embroideries at that point and you could only really get it when you saw the three layers together. It was a bit like working with filters on an iPhone.

Maison Margiela, Spring 2018—Dressing in Haste

Dressing in haste is about the amazing looks you can come up with when not conscious—dressing in the dark, leaving very early in the morning, or taking the dogs out for a walk. You grab whatever was lying around and start layering it up, and presto, there you go. Some are quite disastrous and some are quite inspiring.

Maison Margiela Artisanal, Spring 2018—Prints With a Purpose

I wanted to reproduce through a print the high shine of a plastic rain coat worn over a man’s coat. Other pieces were made with light reflective fabrics that when they walked under a certain light became multi-colorful, and not when they seemed when they first walked on. The monster trainers were made with Reebok.

Maison Margiela Artisanal, Fall 2018—Nomadic Cutting

Nomadic cutting is a manner of cutting garments that enables clothes to migrate around the body. You can see it’s a skirt with a waistband but within it I’ve cut the l’image of a jacket. Or a caban that’s cut into a coat, or a little bustier dress that’s cut into a cape.

Maison Margiela, Spring 2019—Genderless

What had happened was I had started to fit on boys and girls. I introduced Thomas [Riguelle] and Valentine [Charrasse], my muses at work, into the fittings. So I would fit on Thomas and do the fitting of that same coat on Valentine, and if I felt they looked like they both owned the piece, it went into the collection—genderless.