For the fashion crowd, word of yet another hotel from a big designer brand might be expected to elicit the kind of withering yawn reserved for the criminally passé. Not so the new hotel project from Maison Martin Margiela in Paris. While the brand doesn’t have the global fame of Versace or Armani, both of which have opened hotels, its niche position is part of its appeal. This is a fashion insider’s fashion label, with the kind of stylistic trademarks that can leave those not in the know feeling baffled.
In more than 20 years since the label was founded, its creations have ranged from the wittily decorative to the deconstructed. It has made coats made from Christmas tinsel and paper towels, put shoulder pads on the outside of clothes and turned a leather butcher’s apron into an evening dress.
Behind the label’s unique vision was founder Martin Margiela, an elusive Belgian who avoided being interviewed or photographed and didn’t bow after his shows. However, a few years ago he left his own label, which was bought by holding group Only The Brave in 2002, and it’s now designed by a team. Since then the brand has become more commercial, branching out into fragrance and interior design. Purists say the clothes aren’t the same without Margiela himself but a sense of surrealism, wit and the avant-garde remains.