Maison Margiela SS26: Glenn Martens' Ghostly Silhouettes of Seasons Passed
The spirits from his 2025 Artisanal collection are alive and well in his eerie ready-to-wear debut.
Summary
- Glenn Martens debuted his first ready-to-wear collection for Maison Margiela, blending a gothic aesthetic with translucent and distressed garments.
- The collection blends traditional silhouettes with modern elements like plastic finishes and sneakers, incorporating design hallmarks from his couture debut.
Glenn Martens has presented Maison Margiela‘s SS26 ready-to-wear collection at Paris Fashion Week, marking his first ready-to-wear collection for the label. It was July when Martens showcased a strong couture debut for Maison Margiela Artisanal, but in the latest presentation, echoes of that show reverberate in a subdued, spectral form.
The show began with a duo of gothic black leather coats, followed by scoop-neck double-breasted vests, both worn without a shirt underneath. The dark theme is lifted by bursts of painted floral, white pull ties, and delicate lace. Garments like knitted sweaters, gowns, and outerwear had a ghostly quality: lightweight and translucent.
A sheer gown was fitted atop a strong blazer, giving the impression of a gray apparition hovering over the runway. And at another dramatic moment, a mock neck bodice was seemingly cast in red plaster, and juxtaposed with a sweet blue floral at the skirt and sleeves. Draped and engineered distortions in the tailoring amplified the eerie effect of consistent mouthpieces, which held each model’s lips ajar. The peeling wallpaper treatments of Martens’ Artisanal line were also resurrected, this time as gown prints with intense draping, and also on a jacket constructed from decaying canvas panels.
In certain looks, austere silhouettes had a monastic sensibility, while others were reminiscent of 19th-century men’s outerwear — all finished with white Margiela ties. Many of these rather traditional-looking garments are immediately subverted by fabric choices such as light-wash denim or plastic finishes. In other instances, sneakers breathe new life into looks, one being a white shirt (subtly evocative of a tuxedo) paired with baggy black pants tucked into silver high-top sneakers. Elsewhere, a black bandage sneaker is paired with deconstructed black trousers and a blue pinstriped blazer.
See the gallery above for a closer look at the Maison Margiela ready-to-wear SS26 collection. Stay tuned to Hypebeast for the latest fashion industry insights.
