By Jessica Ye (Jessica Yap)
Shipping containers stacked like urban monoliths. Models gliding with quiet intensity, faces softened by masks, silhouettes balancing structure and drift. Organza floated over tailored wool, textures collided in ways that felt alive. This was not Paris. This was Maison Margiela in Shanghai, and it felt entirely of its own world.
For the first time, Margiela showed its Fall/Winter 2026 collection outside Paris, choosing Shanghai Fashion Week as the stage. The move was bold — an unmistakable signal that the house sees fashion as something bigger than geography. Under Glenn Martens, Margiela continues to honour its deconstructed legacy while pushing its forms into new territory.
Artisanal couture and ready-to-wear shared the runway in one seamless narrative. Jackets carried elongated shoulders that hinted at control without restriction. Coats revealed seams that made their construction part of the design. Dresses layered organza over wool and silk in ways that felt grounded yet almost weightless. Every garment demanded attention; each silhouette teased the line between the familiar and the strange.
One coat paired sculpted shoulders with sheer organza, creating a shape that seemed to hover above the body. A dress made from strips of jersey and silk moved with its own rhythm, as if alive. Masks obscured faces, forcing the eye onto fabric, cut, and form. The collection asked: what is the garment, what is the body wearing it, and how do they inhabit this strange space together?
Historical references were present but never literal. High collars, long sleeves, and elongated silhouettes nodded to the past while feeling refracted, unfamiliar, uncanny. The tension between precision and ambiguity threaded through every look.
Shanghai itself became part of the story. Industrial backdrops, soaring skyscrapers, and historic neighbourhoods mirrored the collection’s mix of the structured and the ephemeral. The city amplified the clothes, turning the runway into a dialogue between place, body, and design.
The moment didn’t end when the models left the runway. From April 2 to April 6, 2026, Margiela opened Artisanal: Our Creative Laboratory along Yan Dang Road. Fifty-eight archival couture pieces shared industrial container spaces with the FW26 collection, allowing visitors to engage with the house’s history in dialogue with its present.
Artisanal: Our Creative Laboratory Exhibition in Shanghai | Images: Maison Margiela
Early experiments in material, masks, and deconstructed tailoring were displayed alongside the new collection, reinforcing Margiela’s fascination with transformation.
This Shanghai presentation is part of MaisonMargiela/folders, a series of exhibitions across China: Anonymity: Our History of Masks in Beijing, Tabi: Collectors in Chengdu, and Bianchetto: Atelier Experience in Shenzhen. Each activation explores a facet of the house’s design philosophy, translating runway ideas into public experience.
By choosing Shanghai, Margiela reminded us that fashion can exist beyond familiar capitals, that clothing still has power, presence, and personality even in a city far from Paris. The show and exhibitions together made a single point clear: Margiela is not just a house, it’s a lens through which we can see how craft, idea, and spectacle intersect.
Shanghai was not a detour. It was a statement. It made fashion feel alive, unexpected, and essential again.
