Marcia Berger
by Caitlin Rider

The late Marcia Berger found her calling in the quiet and thoughtful deconstructionist visions that were being created between Antwerp and Tokyo in the late 1980s. Through the next 20 years, she became dedicated to the preservation and collection of some of the most important avant garde designers of the 20th century, including Yohji Yamamoto, Helmut Lang, Ann Demeulemeester and Martin Margiela.

Though Berger was a self-proclaimed “simple jeans and t-shirt gal from New Mexico,” the works these designers created became an intrinsic part of her own personal narrative as they filled every inch, nook and cranny of her living space. It was her Margiela collection that took precedent, eventually spanning more than 1,000 pieces. One of Berger’s greatest pleasures was to spend hours in her favorite boutiques discussing the conceptual elements behind each new piece that came from the house of Margiela.

Marcia Berger spoke often with those close to her about how she was a “maniac for the clothes,” but when she died suddenly, few people in her life knew about the enormity or grandeur of her collections. Many of the items Berger had accrued from Margiela over the years were still in their original stark white packaging. The process of sorting and archiving Berger’s Margiela collection was more than the intimate excavation of the possessions of one passionate collector. It offered a rare retrospective of some of the most important designs to come out of the Margiela house since its inception in 1989. Marcia Berger is one of the few people in the world to have acquired Margiela’s designs in such breadth – from the designer’s simplest to his highly conceptual and sophisticated artisanal collections.