Glenn Martens masters the art of imperfection in his first Maison Margiela RTW collection

Martens let the clothes speak for themselves—and the chaotic orchestra played along.

Mastering imperfection has always been the core of Maison Margiela’s ready-to-wear line. It takes traditional garments, reassembles, and deconstructs them with careworn fabrics, unravelling hems, and other salvaged elements to create pieces that are both authentic and fashion-forward. This season, Glenn Martens brought to life a new but even better interpretation of the house’s signature deconstructionist aesthetic in his first ready-to-wear collection with the French fashion house.

The Belgian designer’s ready-to-wear debut for Maison Margiela dug into the house’s archive to move the label further forward. It’s a collection that is equally old as new, and it reverberated not only around the clothes, but everything at the runway show on Oct. 4, 2025 during Paris Fashion Week.

Maison Margiela’s Spring/Summer 2026 runway show opened with 61 child musicians, aged 7 to 15, playing a chaotic mix of Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Strauss. Just like its S/S 1990 show where kids joined the runway, the orchestra’s performance had guests smiling from ear to ear even before the first model hit the catwalk. Martens’ message was loud and clear: sometimes, the wrong notes strike the right tone.

It echoed in the show’s opening looks, featuring conventional clothing reinvented with the house’s signature odd aesthetic. Waistcoats were elongated to full-length and came with rounded shoulders and other constructions—a Margiela signature, from the founder’s narrow-torsoed, puffed-up jacket in1989. Pants came with low crotches, and classic denims were turned formal. Pull-ties were placed on the outside of tailored jackets and scarves were infused into outerwear.

As striking as the spectral ensembles was how the models’ mouths were clamped open with metal bands that resemble Margiela’s emblematic ‘four stitch’ non-logo. It was a vivid representation of the “screaming corpse effect,” triggering base-level fear among viewers.

Martens brought color to the dark theme with delicated laces and bursts of floral taken straight out of his medieval-inspired couture show in July that was technically his first collection for the house. He embossed them onto knitted sweaters worn under structured blazers and painted them on voluminous maxi dresses. Silk jackets were “plasticized” to withstand rain, while gowns and outerwear were made lightweight and translucent for a ghostly quality.

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Martens continued to showcase eerie elegance in a sheer gown that was fitted atop a blazer to create the idea of an apparition hovering over the runway, as well as the mock neck bodice seemingly cast in red plaster. Recycled denim and adhesive tapes, meanwhile, were used as decorative elements and to change the volume of pieces. The collection also included a re-issue of the house’s heel-less footwear (the heel hidden inside the shoe) that was first introduced in 2015.

Watch the full Maison Margiela Spring 2026 show below:

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