Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 15

MartinMargiela Couture 1998 Artisanal Lingerie & WorkOnPaper Line0 WhiteBoxedSet

$24,800
£18,402.56
€21,436.46
CA$34,521.78
A$38,443.12
CHF 20,007.52
MX$473,998.98
NOK 254,811.03
SEK 239,497.67
DKK 159,942.61
Shipping
Retrieving quote...
The 1stDibs Promise:
Authenticity Guarantee,
Money-Back Guarantee,
24-Hour Cancellation

About the Item

As conceptual art while he transitioned to French artisan-house Hermes artistic director in 1998, Belgian Martin Margiela--whose creations today debut in the setting of a contemporary-art gallery priced at upwards of EU$150,000--made this ink print and lingerie. Conceived by arguably the most culturally influential contemporary fashion designer since Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, it is part of a limited-edition-of-two white-boxed set for Spring 1998 that includes the couture Maison Martin Margiela "Artisanal Line 0" body harness in its maker's signature-color white. The same lingerie--one white and the other black--starred in a film made by Margiela among the five that he screened in Paris to present his Spring/Summer 1998 "Flat Collection" at the Conciergerie. In that film, titled "4", which begins with a view of the iconic topless tabi "boots", the hands of Margiela's white-labcoat-clad assistants enter the frame (see our photos) to manipulate different garments on a model who initially wears the lingerie as if jewelry over bare skin. The harness then transforms multiple types of clothing when they are individually wrapped inward around the straps to appear as if ruched. In the film, a simple dark collared lightweight-fabric coat, a white collared button-down shirt, and a dark button-down thin-knit cardigan--all with the "displaced neckline" or "displaced shoulder" of that collection's flat-hanging clothes--became new functional shapes each featuring a collarless plunging v-neckline, whereby the harness is hidden within the folded fabric like lingerie. Both black versions of the lingerie are in museum collections. In Martin Margiela's home-country, the ModeMuseum (MoMu) archived its collected piece as OBJ7660. In the 2018 Parisian retrospective exhibition at Musee de la Mode/Palais Galleria when its artistic director was Martin Margiela (working with Curator Alexandre Samson), the second black lingerie was featured on a mannequin and collected the same year by the Vogue Paris Foundation. Other conceptual designs from this same 1998 collection of jewelry were acquired by TheMet museum in Manhattan. Without the restriction of the use and function of clothing, the small uncreased print--which is on a card that can be removed from the interior-box bottom that it loosely spans--shows the buyer how to endlessly fashion unique tops using the structural-elastic lingerie as an undergarment for their own vintage clothing. This is a more obvious example of the once avant-garde concept of anti-fashion upcycling that Martin Margiela introduced to challenge social and fashion-industry norms by the 1990s, which echos the revolutionary anti-art of Marcel Duchamp. Essentially, their best work represents a tradition-shattering idea, not merely a new manufactured object but one with the power to make people think and act differently. While Duchamp memorably did so in 1917 with a white porcelain urinal that he attached to a gallery-exhibition wall and titled "Fountain", Margiela also emphasized that the reuse of an everyday item, like a piece of vintage clothing, in a new way in the context of a fashion collection can be a progressive statement. What makes the print so special and worthy of framing for display is that, without words, the three numbered images on a single white card encapsulate the before-its-time fashion manifesto of Martin Margiela to recycle fashion in remarkable new wearable ways, such as harnessed by his unique lingerie. According to The New York Times in its 2021 feature-story that reflected on his radical fashion design and delved into his crossover art, Margiela "changed how we dressed in the 1990s", while his art embodies "the visionary man he has always been." At a turning-point shortly after Margiela designed this couture set in 1997, his personal manifesto became more difficult to accomplish in his fashion career as the new leader of France's historic luxury fashion-house Hermes, for which his first womenswear collection was presented for Autumn/Winter 1998. Frustrated by the limitations of the industrialized luxury trade and conglomerate conflicts with his closely guarded privacy, the famously "invisible" designer pre-maturely retired from the fashion industry in 2009 to independently build on his clever artistry in other mediums. Margiela continues to demonstrate what he often told his fashion teams: "The less you have, the more creative you are as a designer." This minimal finely-crafted lingerie without size or gender restriction--composed of adjustable "polya-elasthanne" straps with a clear anti-slip strip on the underside and three silver-plated metal double-rings--can be worn either as a concealed structural undergarment or as a visible jewelry-like body harness in appreciation of its meaning as a foundation for recycling fashion. While the initial Maison Martin Margiela ready-to-wear brand tag until the late 1990s was a distinct corner-sewn unbranded white label accompanied by tags for origin and materials/care, the couture version for this lingerie is a single tiny white unbranded tag stitched in a line near the end of the waist strap, noting in English, "Made In France," with succinct material/care identification. The set's white unbranded box and its white black-typed couture-identification sticker complete the "invisible-brand" aesthetic. We interpret the black-type codes on the aged box-sticker (“E98 ST HAUT; Struct Elas Blanc; 02; TU"): Spring 1998 Haute Couture; white structural-elastic garment; Artisanal Line 0 edition of two; one size only. The print, lingerie and box are in very good condition with only one mark on the rear edge of the exterior box-lid. Although initially tried on by the sole owner to realize a restructured shirt, the lingerie body-harness was never worn. It was collected in Belgium at the Brussels boutique where Martin Margiela initially sold his brand with his founding business-partner Jenny Meirens since 1988. Prior, Margiela worked for several years as a fashion-design assistant to Parisian Jean Paul Gaultier. Both designers have since received independent museum retrospectives internationally--from Paris' Grand Palais and Musee Palais Galliera (The City of Paris Fashion Museum) to NYC's The Brooklyn Museum and Antwerp's MoMu. While others continue to try, Martin Margiela (b.1957) is the only leading fashion designer to have made a full-time transition to the commercial contemporary-art world with such highly valued works. While our set is a rare revealing piece of both fashion and art history, Margiela's recognized art objects date back to fashion-related drawings and sculptures in the late 1980s, while his first museum exhibition of garments was at Museum Boijmans Van Beuninggen in Rotterdam in 1997 when he produced this couture boxed set.
  • Designer:
  • Brand:
  • Dimensions:
    Marked Size: TU one size only (EU)
  • Style:
    Contemporary Art (In the Style Of)
  • Place of Origin:
  • Period:
  • Material Notes:
    mixed media art as boxed limited-edition-of-two print and couture structural garment for anti-fashion upcycling
  • Condition:
    Wear consistent with age and use.
  • Seller Location:
    Chicago, IL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU3244218126742

More From This Seller

View All
Couture Martin Margiela 1994 Artisanal Line0 Upcycled Socks Overdyed Pullover
By Maison Martin Margiela
Located in Chicago, IL
In 1994, Martin Margiela did something unprecedented with his luxury fashion brand Maison Martin Margiela, which was to debut a collection with no new designs but rather a new-for-it...
Category

1990s Belgian Pullovers

MartinMargiela 1990 1stRetrospectiveCollection1994 Sheer Black Convertible Apron
By Maison Martin Margiela
Located in Chicago, IL
As a variation of the traditional waiter-style apron that Belgian former fashion designer Martin Margiela reworked with his eponymous Maison Martin Margiela since its first collection for Spring/Summer 1989, this minimalist convertible transparent black chiffon rectangular garment was part of his Spring 1994 collection. The iconic corner-stitched textural white-cotton brand label is stenciled with seemingly contradictory text referencing an earlier Fall 1990 collection. Instead of the blank label that had become internationally recognized among progressive-fashion buyers during the brand's initial five years, this black print was added in this manner for only one collection during its founder's tenure. This distinct typography identifies it a one of his favorites that he re-editioned from his first 10 fashion shows. This season-less self-curated retrospective collection without any new designs was unprecedented in the ready-to-wear fashion industry, which sold only newly-designed clothes typically two to five times annually. In the early 1990s, this old-made-new-again collection was astonishing for a Paris-based high-end brand, for which any lack of fresh designs for Spring had otherwise been attributed to the loss of an artistic director or the outbreak of war. Nevertheless, there are subtle differences of color, material and draping possibilities that make our re-edition unique from the 1990 apron and from later "replicas", which was the term that Margiela printed on a different kind of label for his second self-curated retrospective in Spring 1999 following 10 more collections. Aside from the text-printed brand label with four characteristic hand-sewn corner stitches, the only other element that unified Margiela's first collection of favorites was that all the items were overdyed a darker color so that the clothes were various shades of grey, blue or black depending on the original color of the textile and how much dye the thread/yarn absorbed. The first Margiela apron...
Category

1990s Italian Aesthetic Evening Dresses

VivienneWestwood 1998 3Piece Runway Look for Jagger Shirt Skirt Suit Ensemble
By Vivienne Westwood
Located in Chicago, IL
For the late British designer's Spring/Summer 1999 fashion show, this Vivienne Westwood runway-look three-piece ensemble of a black corset-sty...
Category

1990s English Skirt Suits

Couture 1990 MartinMargiela Unique Openwork Mohair Knit Snap&Tie Convertible Top
By Maison Martin Margiela
Located in Chicago, IL
With Belgian former couture-fashion designer Martin Margiela's original blank-white textural-cotton corner-sewn label from the early 1990s visible above the prominent knit-hole, this openwork yarn top that is clearly a one-of-a-kind "Line 0" Artisanal garment by Maison Martin Margiela is crocheted from a brown soft animal-hair blend into a see-through changeante pattern recalling a collapsed spiderweb. A prominent European dealer sold a similarly designed but longer deconstructed openwork grey cape that also features a circular knit hole in a mohair-blend. Its remaining additional tag indicates that it was produced by Margielas' longtime Italian knitter Miss Deanna for the Autumn-Hiver 1993-1994 collection. Further, we have found similar one-of-a-kind Margiela openwork-knit and unraveling pieces, as well as one with oversized snaps like the fasteners on our top, dating back to his 1992 collections. Suggesting it could have been from an earlier collection, Antwerp's fashion museum MoMu featured a pale deconstructed mohair knit sweater dating from 1990 in its major Martin Margiela 20-year retrospective, which was produced in collaboration with the designer during his final year at the house in 2008. Based on other Margiela couture pieces with more than one remaining identification tag, the design of our cardigan without a remaining text tag began as a vintage top collected by Martin Margiela to upcycle or reproduce, and/or it was made-to-order by Miss Deanna before he finished it to some degree with his Paris-based team. Our knit fastens with pompon-tipped yarn ties, along with two signature silver oversized-snap buttons, which most noticeably appeared on Margiela tops in 1994 for a collection that was inspired by toy-doll wardrobes and included human-sized reproductions of actual miniatures. For price comparison, another 1stDibs dealer currently lists a silver-oversized-snap-fastening brown faux-leather windbreaker "doll" jacket by Maison Martin Margiela for upwards of $7,000. Also on 1stDibs, two other Margiela 1990s...
Category

1990s Italian Vests

MartinMargiela S/S 2008 PlungingVneck Bias Ruched Black HalterTop HighSlit Dress
By Maison Martin Margiela
Located in Chicago, IL
From one of the last fashion collections for French Maison Martin Margiela by its renowned founder Belgian artist Martin Margiela before he prematurely retired in 2009, this asymmetr...
Category

Early 2000s Italian Aesthetic Evening Dresses

AlexanderMcQueen 2002 Shredded Silk Chiffon Wool Black Evening Gown
By Alexander McQueen
Located in Chicago, IL
British Alexander McQueen (1969-2010) designed this curvaceous uniquely-draped wool and hand-shredded silk-chiffon black cocktail-dress evening-gown for his Autumn/Winter 2002-2003 collection "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", which set a ready-to-wear $37,500 auction record in 2020 for its complimentary black billowing silk coat. Comparatively, a 1stDibs midi-dress listing similar to ours from his subsequent fashion-season collection for a raw-edge-cut silk chiffon red dress for Spring/Summer 2003 in good condition sold for $10,144. Our intricate ruched semi-transparent silk chiffon and sleek lined opaque wool hourglass midi dress is in very good condition. Although made in Italy, the tagged size 38 will suit a French 38/US 4-6. Like the 2020-auctioned coat from Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, the gown is also among the few that encapsulate this collection according to Alexander McQueen, who was quoted by magazine Numero: "This collection was inspired by Tim Burton. It started out dark and then got more romantic as it went along." This is why The Met Costume Institute showcased a runway ensemble including the aforementioned coat in its museum retrospective, "Savage Beauty", a year after the designer died...
Category

Early 2000s Italian Evening Dresses and Gowns

You May Also Like

Martin Margiela artisanal corset top made with tailoring canvases, fw 2003
By Maison Martin Margiela
Located in London, GB
Martin Margiela artisanal corset top made with a patchwork of tailoring linen canvases backed in cream cotton. Fall-Winter 2003
Category

Early 2000s Italian Shirts

Vintage 1990’s Martin Margiela A line long deconstructed dress with felt patches
By Maison Martin Margiela
Located in COLLINGWOOD, AU
This piece epitomises the deconstructed era of the Margiela house in the 1990’s. A maxi length, A line shaped dress in a signature colour for the house (taupe/olive) with grey felt ...
Category

1990s Italian Aesthetic Evening Dresses

MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA SS 95 Rare "Reproduction" of a 70's Transparent Neglige
By Maison Martin Margiela
Located in Milano, MILANO
Spring Summer 1995 iconic and rare "Reproduction" of a 70's transparent negligé by Maison Martin Margiela. Buttons on the front. The composition tag is missing, seems to be made of ...
Category

1990s Evening Dresses and Gowns

Martin Margiela Artisanal Evening Dress Made Out Of Vintage Petticoats, ss 2003
By Maison Martin Margiela
Located in London, GB
▪ Archival Margiela Evening Dress ▪ Creative Director: Martin Margiela ▪ Spring-Summer 2003 ▪ Museum Grade ▪ Constructed from repurposed vintage petticoats ▪ The outer skirt showca...
Category

Early 2000s Italian Evening Dresses and Gowns

Martin Margiela Artisanal Dress Made From Two Vintage Dresses, fw 2003
By Maison Martin Margiela
Located in London, GB
▪ Archival Margiela Artisanal Dress ▪ Creative Director: Martin Margiela ▪ Fall-Winter 2003 ▪ Artisanal (Line 0), handcrafted in Paris, Fran...
Category

1990s French Evening Dresses and Gowns

Maison Martin Margiela silk cape SS 2006
By Maison Martin Margiela
Located in Алматинский Почтамт, KZ
Maison Martin Margiela silk cape SS 2006 good condition, no special nuances white tag / label
Category

Early 2000s Italian Blouses