ANTWERP, Belgium — Fashion is having a Martin Margiela moment, and now museums are following suit.
As Paris gears up for a Margiela retrospective at Palais Galliera in 2018, an exhibition in Antwerp focuses on the Belgian designer’s work as artistic director of women’s ready-to-wear at Hermès between 1997 and 2003. “Margiela: The Hermès Years,” opens at MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp Friday.
The show was designed in collaboration with the retired designer, who stayed true to his reputation as fashion’s invisible man by skipping the vernissage on Thursday night. Margiela also worked on the accompanying catalog, which he dedicated to Jean-Louis Dumas, the late Hermès chief executive officer who hired him, and Jenny Meirens, cofounder of Maison Martin Margiela.
Kaat Debo, director and curator in chief of MoMu, believes the time is right to revisit Margiela’s work at Hermès, both because of his continued influence on designers including Demna Gvasalia, Kanye West and Phoebe Philo, and because his respectful attitude to women resonates at a time of worldwide protests for women’s rights.
“You can’t overestimate his influence. What he proposed at the end of the Eighties, beginning of the Nineties as avant-garde fashion has become mainstream,” Debo told WWD.
“I also noticed that this particular body of work
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