“Very early on I understood that fashion, as we have presented and done it so far, it would never be the same again”
Maison Margiela: The Metaphor of Tango in the Pandemic SS 2021
"The creative process" that we are immersed in in John Galliano's DocuFilm for Margiela, inspires and aspires to make us understand how an artisanal creation process gradually transforms into an industrial production process. All this through Tango: Galliano's vision of Tango dancers in a dilapidated warehouse in Buenos Aires, led him to shape the idea of the New Collection. He wanted to make us participants in his creative process, how to make it intelligible to the team, how to teach it to the models, how to transmit it to the general public, how to produce it: starting from an artisanal process to transform it into a business process.
More than a film about the Maison, it is a documentary about what a business model is today, in the midst of a pandemic: everyone has their own role, their own position and takes charge of their own responsibilities. Everyone "entrusts" themselves into the arms of the other, just as dancers entrust themselves to each other on the waves of music. The movement gives shape to the clothes, communication must be clear, fluid, free of obstacles and bottlenecks. At first, even the models seem to be in serious difficulty, having to express themselves through dance, but the change towards naturalness flows like a river and envelops the process of maturation and acclimatization with clear freshness.
The pandemic has also given unexpected results: mending or cutting edges, pieces of fabric or leather that before it, were just to be thrown away. "Recover", do not take for granted what is initially discarded, as it will be useful at a later time and above all, the world of supplies is struggling, it no longer has the flows of before, better not to throw away, but to keep.
The pandemic has also given unexpected results: mending or cutting edges, pieces of fabric or leather that before it, were just to be thrown away. "Recover", do not take for granted what is initially discarded, as it will be useful at a later time and above all, the world of supplies is struggling, it no longer has the flows of before, better not to throw away, but to keep.
Galliano has captured the real change in the pandemic and in the enormous difficulty of the entire fashion sector:
“Very soon I understood that fashion, as we have presented and made it up to now, would never be the same again”
And again:
"It won't be until a vaccine is found. And only when I accepted this new reality within myself, I was able to embrace the idea that something new could happen, that we could really change things, have new ideas, be enterprising, and this rekindled my enthusiasm . Nothing will ever be able to impede the course of creativity, I will not allow this to happen!”
The creative process is therefore not only in the realization of the idea of the object itself, but is accomplished in documenting, organizing, advertising and making a profit, from something unique and unrepeatable. Aware that today, every moment is important, every small manifestation of sociality is gold, every recovered scrap is precious. This philosophy sums up the 44 minutes needed to watch the film. 2021 marks a new awareness for fashion: eco-sustainability, sociality, usability, communication, are mantras that the big fashion houses are internalizing and manifesting. They are manifestos of how the sector is able to adapt, change, maintain itself. Solid foundations for the future to come and for a new awareness that Maison Margiela will make us participants in. Change comes from us, it is up to us to welcome it or reject it.