Hasta La Ideas

by Anna Carnick

Adding fuel to an already fiery mystique, Maison Martin Margiela lifts just a corner of the veil surrounding the enigmatic fashion icon in the self-titled book published by Rizzoli.

Often referred to as the seventh member of the Antwerp Six, Margiela’s famous for a high fashion oeuvre characterized by an overwhelmingly subversive beauty including daring deconstruction, non-traditional fabrics, oversized proportions and provocative reinterpretations of classics. Writing to Margiela in the book’s introductory essay, Jean Paul Gaultier—for whom Margiela worked for three years early on in his career—remarks “For 20 years already, you’ve been methodically dissecting the garments with a scalpel to extract the ‘substance from the marrow’ and reinvent them.”

Margiela is also widely known for eschewing the spotlight, a highly unusual move in the world of fashion, and one that feeds into his cult-like following. Photos of the founder are rare, as are face-to-face or even phone interviews—most journalists are simply fortunate to communicate with him via fax.

Designed by Margiela himself, the book features hundreds of images pulled from his personal archives, many never before seen, depicting shows, exhibitions, editorials and more. From his first jacket to the atelier’s 20th anniversary show, the spirit of Margiela shines throughout. Essays by international design stars, including the likes of Gaultier and Vanessa Beecroft, appear as mini booklets throughout the 300+ page collection, all wrapped in a white embroidered fabric cover.

For years it seemed enough to let the clothes—and, in the last few years, also jewelry and home décor—speak for themselves. With this collection, Margiela offers us a few new pieces of the puzzle. An intimate look at one of the most secretive houses in fashion, what comes through clearest is a life passionately dedicated to pushing the limits of his art.

Released today, Maison Martin Margiela is available now from Amazon.

Felice Varini is known for creating illusions of flat graphics superimposed on three dimensional spaces. These illusions, which he’s been churning out since 1979, play with the rules of human perception and constructed perspective, with painted lines aligning in space to look like a flat graphic from a fixed viewpoint. For a taste of his past work, check out the painted rooms we blogged in 2006.

Now, in Cercle et suite d’éclats, Varini has taken on the challenge of working at the scale of the village, superimposing perfect circles on the town of Vercorin in the Swiss Alps. From inside the village, the graphic is fragmented and impossible to read, but from a nearby vantage point, the lines come together to form a series of rings.

So how did Varini make this? It’s both simple and amazing—the graphic is projected directly onto the town from the selected viewpoint and then traced.

More shots after the jump.

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If you’re signed up for our emails, then you have an hour’s head start on this news: we have a limited number of gift sets available in our shop. We’ve been saving the last remaining copies of issues 1 and 2 for this year-end gift set which contains our first three issues, plus the promise of more goodies in the new year: Issue 4 will be mailed in January, followed by Spring (April), Summer (July) and Fall (October). (Sorry, single copies of #1 and #2 aren’t available.) (Eight sets left!) SOLD OUT! thank you.

Whether you’ve been wanting to subscribe for yourself or planning ahead for Christmas gift-giving, the UPPERCASE magazine gift set is just the thing!

Gift subscriptions are also available starting with either issue 3 or issue 4, when ordering simply enter your name and contact info in the billing address but input your recipient’s name and address in the shipping fields.

-> Bel & Bel site

Album cover for Jackie McLean’s “It’s Time,” designed by Reid Miles for Blue Note Records.

–> Lined and Unlined