MARTIN MARGIELA HERFST/WINTER 97/98

Martin Margiela’s fashion shows have always been very ‘anarchistic’: never taking place on the official catwalks, but somewhere in Paris; very post-punk with candles, red wine and very loud, badly mixed music. The images taken of these shows were very alike, very grunge. Gorik Lindemans: “When I am asked to make the video report of his ’97/’98 autumn/winter collection, I decide to leave that messy style behind because it had become so cliché. I wanted to make very exact, statistic images, going into the detail of the patterns and the couture created by Margiela. I wanted to make a video as a fashion magazine: vertically showing the clothes in detail. It also had to be a run-down of the event: a bus drops the models off somewhere in Paris, where the people are not awaiting the fashion show. The bus stops, a marching band gets out followed by the models, who walk around a little, surprising the audience, and get back in the bus. Afterwards the bus takes the models to the next spot. This was repeated 4 times. Unfortunately, the whole event was so chaotic, that I didn’t succeed in capturing the right, statistic images of the clothes themselves. So, my video became more of a report of the events of the day. Martin Margiela did pick up my idea of showing the couture in detail, with no models and just statistic images, for his next show for spring/summer ’98."

This work has been digitised in the frame of DCA Project