The ghostly green silhouette of an ocean liner flickering in and out of sight in the lobby of Maison Margiela headquarters set the stage for a prequel to the chronicles of the Count and Hen, the protagonists of “Cinema Inferno.”
The strains of a piano and cello duo performing Ludvig van Beethoven's “Sonata Pathétique” immediately brought to mind HBO's “Succession,” heralding spring's central theme: streaming.
Above, the parade portrayed the characters' parents, who met for the first time during their passage to America.
“One, son of an impoverished aristocratic line; the other, the daughter of a pretentious industrial family,” the program notes describe.
The creative director of Maison Margiela, John Galliano, offered a moving story of impeccable execution, a highlight in a season of overly realistic proposals, building a collection from “the steely climate of the trip, its characters and a shipment loaded with trunks filled with clothing, which will ultimately end up in the adaptable hands of their future descendants.”
The characters start out smartly dressed in their early 20th century wardrobes as they set off on a collision course. The dominant somber palette telegraphed a rational couple rather than romantic entanglements.
Little by little things became looser. Drapes and pleats were laminated to imitate clothes packed for too long. Sections of a skirt hem taped together, or parts of a bodice cut or folded seemed like on-the-fly customization. Genre sets came to merge with each other, as elements were reused.
By the time the trip through the spring lineup is over, he's wearing culottes with turned-up hems so generous they ended up looking like ruffled culottes, and she's wearing a monastic cape dress, suggesting compromise.
Worn indifferently by male and female models, and with genders drifting through each model's gait (delicate and precious for a feminine vibe, taciturn and stooped for a masculine version), the clothes suggested throwing the rule book overboard. . That's a path Maison Margiela and Galliano have been following for a long time, to great effect.
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