Hermes Upcycling

Belgian designer Martin Margiela (b. 1957) — whose life, career, clothing designs and vintage shoes have become cult-collector obsessions — pushed those who attended his shows outside their comfort zones. In the years following his maison's 1988 debut, he toyed with creative and aesthetic paradoxes that persist in fashion today.

Consider the Spring/Summer 2001 shirt patchworked from vintage clothing labels, or his famous corset dresses made from tailoring dummies, from his Fall/Winter 1997 line. Or his oversize collection for Fall/Winter 2000. In 1992, Margiela told Dépêche Mode magazine, “My clothes appeal to women of a certain mindset rather than of a specific age or physique.”

Born in Genk, Belgium, in 1957, Margiela knew he wanted to be a fashion designer after catching glimpses of Parisian fashion on TV as a child. Although his parents discouraged this career choice as an oddly funny aspiration, Margiela enrolled in the fashion program of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. There, he befriended and graduated a year ahead of the Antwerp Six — the acclaimed group of Belgian fashion designers comprising Dries Van Noten, Walter Van Beirendonck, Ann Demeulemeester, Marina Yee, Dirk Bikkembergs and Dirk Van Saene.

Like many of his contemporaries in the 1980s, Margiela understood Paris fashion but felt a deep resonance with the deconstructed beauty espoused by Japanese designers Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, of Comme des Garçons. Margiela’s fascination with Japan influenced many of his earliest collections and designs, from a dress pieced together from broken plates to his iconic Tabi boots, inspired by the split-toe Japanese worker’s shoe, which dates back to the 15th century. He decided to launch his own line while working for renowned Paris designer Jean Paul Gaultier.

Margiela, Gaultier has often stated, was his best assistant. Even then, the 2019 film Martin Margiela: In His Own Words suggests, he was acutely aware of the widening gulf between the art and the business of fashion.

Margiela’s debut show was nothing short of spectacular. Set in a packed Café de la Gare in the still-seedy Marais district, it was also scandalous to the Parisian fashion set of the time. The designer tore up the conventions of contemporary couture presentations, most notably having his models, plucked from the streets and wearing ink-blotted Tabis, wend their way through the crowd. The show redefined the concept of the runway in a way that would later inspire such designers as Alexander McQueen and Demna Gvasalia.

While the notoriously private designer retired from fashion in 2009, for many Maison Martin Margiela collectors, his pieces capture the irreverence of the postwar, post-punk late 1980s and ’90s. Katy Rodriguez, cofounder of the cult vintage fashion shop Resurrection, is among those who felt a connection to Margiela’s clothing in the subliminal challenges it posed to the time’s beauty norms.

“Growing up in San Francisco and coming out of the end of punk rock, not wanting to be objectified, not wanting to be seen as a sexual object, not wanting your value to be just because you’re pretty — all those clothes played into all of that,” she says. “It really was a reflection of the kind of world the young people I knew at the time wanted to live in.”

Find vintage Maison Martin Margiela boots, evening dresses, jackets and more on 1stDibs.

For fashion lovers, the 1990s have become associated with styles adopted by today’s supermodels and influencers, who never wear the same thing twice. And because fast fashion didn’t yet exist, the design associated with 1990s fashion — vintage '90s handbags, clothing and accessories — has a quality appreciated by the millennial generation: authenticity.

If there was one concept unifying fashion in the 1990s, it was the lean silhouette. “Fashion is a game of proportion,” Alexander Fury wrote in the New York Times in 2016. “Narrow-shouldered and narrow-hipped, the ’90s were skinny.”

If it takes a practiced eye to identify that single concept, that’s because in truth, ’90s fashion was many things to many people. After the 1980s era of strong-shouldered working women, glossy aerobicized bodies and Madonna, fashion branched out.

The industry gained momentum from big-money relaunches of the great Paris houses Dior, Givenchy and Balenciaga, rescued at long last from the constraints of licensing. Japan and Belgium gave fashion new avant-garde ideas to play with. From America came denim, minimalism, '90s grunge fashion and hip-hop. From Italy came sex appeal. And Prada.

For the colorful corsets of her 1990 Portrait collection, audacious British designer Dame Vivienne Westwood drew on 18th-century oil paintings — her models donned the pearl choker necklaces that have become a social media star and a favorite of influencers and fashion lovers all over the world. For a jacket-and-shorts suit from her Fall/Winter 1996–97 Storm in a Teacup line, the designer used the extreme asymmetry of a tartan mash-up to confront, according to Westwood, “the horror of uniformity and minimalism.”

“The ethos of the time was, you could have style, you could be into all kinds of cool stuff. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about status,” says Katy Rodriguez, cofounder of Resurrection. In contrast, “our last 10 years have seen the domination of nonstop luxury, money and status.”

Vintage 1990s Chanel bags, for example, are among the most prized of the brand’s offerings — at Newfound Luxury, proprietor L. Kiyana Macon has "clients who only buy ’90s Chanel because they recognize that it is the best quality.” 

Things were different in the ’90s, and the difference is reflected in the clothes. Pull up any recent “How to Do the 1990s” fashion article (or look at photos of current supermodels Gigi, Kendall and Bella), and you’ll see iconic '90s outfits — knee socks, cardigans, fanny packs, fishnet stockings, slip dresses, flannel shirts and combat boots.

Rodriguez has recently noticed something similar happening. Before COVID, customers searched 1990s stock “for very sexy Galliano, Dior, Cavalli — that kind of thing,” she explains, noting that just a few months ago, “people were posting [on social media] the poshest things they could.” Now, in the age of shutdown, “that would just look out of touch.”

Instead, people are looking for “things that are cool but also easy and comfortable, not necessarily super-luxe,” Rodriguez continues. They’re “heading back to the more avant-garde, anti-fashion designers, like Helmut Lang, [Martin] Margiela and [Ann] Demeulemeester.”

Late designer Franco Moschino shocked and titillated the ’80s fashion elite with his whimsical, irreverent parodies of bourgeois finery. Whether emblazoning a sober blazer with smiley faces or embellishing a skirt suit with cutlery, Moschino rendered high style with a hearty wink. He famously said, “If you can’t be elegant, at least be extravagant” — words that, with all due respect to Susan Sontag, epitomize the essence of camp.

Vintage Moschino pants, jackets and other '90s Moschino garments remain so bold and fresh today that even the house's former creative director, Jeremy Scott, drew on the brand's past and the pop culture of the decade for his debut collection in 2014.

Find vintage 90s dresses, skirts, sweaters and other clothing and accessories on 1stDibs — shop Thierry Mugler, Miuccia Prada, Jean Paul Gaultier and more today.

As the most intimate layer of clothing, lingerie has evolved over time from an object of modesty to one of sensuality. Some vintage and designer lingerie includes garments and accessories that are hard, such as corsets and structured bras, while other items are soft to the touch, including nightgowns and slips.

In the 18th century, European women commonly wore whalebone corsets to create the look of an hourglass figure. Corsets were a standard part of women’s fashion into the 19th century. In 1914, Caresse Crosby filed a patent for the first modern bra, made by sewing two handkerchiefs together with ribbon ties. By the 1920s, the corset fell out of fashion in North America and Europe, and loose silhouettes and silky slips became mainstream.

As fashion returned to feminine forms in the 1930s, so did lingerie, with girdles and minimal bras. During World War II, bras were adapted to the rationing of materials like nylon and metal. In the postwar era, women had more lingerie choices than ever before, with inventions including the strapless bra.

In the 1950s, lingerie became more glamorous, matching the trends led by legendary French couturier Christian Dior and his “New Look,” a collection that introduced a new feminine silhouette of extravagant elegance upon its postwar debut. Just as the evolution of women’s swimwear over time reflected changing aesthetic taste as well as social upheaval, shifts in the design of lingerie owed to changing perspectives toward sex and style trends. Mid-century pinup models like Bettie Page transformed the undergarments market forever with a new desire for sexy lingerie. It would lead to the founding of Victoria’s Secret by Roy and Gaye Raymond in 1977.

In the late 1980s, performers like Madonna and Selena wore bustiers as outerwear, a trend that continued through the 1990s and early 2000s. With the broadcasting of the Victoria's Secret fashion show beginning in 1995, everyday style also changed. Lingerie was no longer expected to be hidden away.

On 1stDibs, find a range of alluring vintage and designer lingerie, including black bodysuits, black bralettes, corsets and more by designers such as Vivienne Westwood, Azzedine Alaïa and Versace.