MM6 Maison Margiela to Highlight Menswear at Pitti Uomo
MILAN — Intimidation, dualism, excitement were all words that popped up frequently as WWD spoke to the MM6 Maison Margiela design team in Paris ahead of their first menswear-only show in Florence on Wednesday.
Invited as guest designer of the winter edition of Pitti Uomo, the brand’s team — strictly anonymous — capitalized on the opportunity to make a deeper dive into their menswear vision, for the first time “not a supporting act to womenswear,” in their own words.
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Slightly under the radar compared to the mainline — which over the past 10 years has reclaimed its spot at the center of the fashion and cultural conversation — MM6 Maison Margiela was introduced in 1997 by the company founder.
It made its runway debut in 2012 during New York Fashion Week and has followed a roving show schedule over time, parading its collections in New York, London and, most recently, Milan. It joined the latter city’s fashion week schedule in February 2020.
Two years later, for fall 2022, the brand formally debuted a menswear collection, which has been consistently unveiled on the catwalk alongside womenswear since then.
With a little help from runway shows, marquee collaborations with Supreme, Solomon and The North Face, among others, it’s grown into a stand-alone entity, maturing beyond its younger brand status but without relinquishing its youthful spin.
The Pitti Uomo invite further cements that trajectory.
“We are delighted to be here at Pitti [Uomo] in Florence showcasing MM6 Maison Margiela’s classic and functional designs for everyday living which highlights our avant-garde brand and thought-provoking collections,” Gaetano Sciuto, chief executive officer of Maison Margiela, told WWD. “We are excited for this opportunity to continue our growth and reach a new audience in the menswear market,” he added.
To be sure, MM6 is known for embracing Martin Margiela’s codes in a less radical way than the main line, never letting them override wearability or “the beauty of the actual pieces of clothing,” as one design studio member said in the conversation.
The overarching rationale for the menswear division, the team said, stemmed from the realization that womenswear was oftentimes influenced by men’s tropes, but the introduction of a dedicated line called for a “readjustment,” one designer said.
Now with the Pitti Uomo showcase, the brand is making a new step in that direction, marking an “anniversary of sorts after three years in the menswear business,” as one design studio member characterized it.
For fall 2025, the creative team looked back at the all-white, heavily painted seminal collection Martin Margiela debuted for the MM6 line in 1997.
Overcoming the “intimidating” feeling of rewriting the brand’s codes (they used the word “erasing”), the team is going for a black-rich menswear display with many a reference.
Pinned to the season’s mood board are images of American jazz musician Miles Davis — his style “very Martin [Margiela],” one designer said — as well as screenshots of “media dance” group performances by American artist Charles Atlas, whose practice draws many parallels to the MM6’s collective approach to design, team members said.
“We kind of wanted to hint already at what’s coming. We are looking back, but we are also looking forward, like we are coming from a house that has such a heritage, but then also making things in a new context and new worlds,” one design team member said about the multiplicity of references embedded in the collection.
The concept of dualism is to inform not just clothing but the whole show concept, down to the use of lighting, in sync with the play on opposites, mix of high and low, juxtaposition of clashing attitudes and the Dadaist approach ingrained in the house’s practice by its founder.
The predominantly black palette, only occasionally spiced up by pops of color, left room for the explorations of menswear archetypes and wardrobe staples, seen through the brand’s inherent youthful lens to exude a carefree spirit. “The American kind of freedom,” a design studio member added.
The peacoat, for example, accented with masking tape rather than leather, as if to suggest one could create its own dupe, is a reminder of the step-by-step guide to create a Margiela sweater out of eight pairs of men’s white socks that appeared in the collectors’ favorite 2004 edition of “A Magazine Curated by Maison Martin Margiela.”
It mingles with tailored pants and blazers, casual bombers, a fuzzy, furry jacket, quilted jackets elevated to faux fur-lined outerwear pieces, business car coats crafted from overdyed satin, plus a beefier range of accessories including a trumpet bag, in nods to Davis’.
“We really looked at the men’s wardrobe holistically….We wanted to associate one function to one item,” one team member said.
Bikers or rock stars in the early 2000s will probably come to mind to the show guests, as models — including a few women exalting the no-gendered MM6 approach — will walk down the runway mounted inside Florence’s Tepidarium del Roster glass and steel greenhouse.
It’s the team’s intention, though, that to evoke a defined attitude is only a “suggestion.” The work of elevating pieces of clothing and giving them an unconventional spin is just a way to provide customers the basic tools to build their personal style.
The concept will reverberate through the show performance, in which individual perception will play a huge role.
Drawing inspiration from Atlas’ 1989 “Put Blood in the Music” documentary in which he interviews music bands including Sonic Youth, John Zorn with Ambitious Lovers and Hugo Largo, the runway lighting — flashes of red, green and blue — will cast different colors on the almost all-black outfits or bathe the show space in white to exalt their blackness.
“Sometimes you see things and sometimes you don’t…and the black clothing, as well, they kind of reveal themselves in different manners all the time,” a designer explained.
The fragile 19th-century glass and steel show venue imposed some musical boundaries, too, requiring the MM6 team to embrace a different route than the techno music compositions that have dominated its most recent runway shows in Milan.
“It’s nice to kind of box yourself into a place which you need to crawl out of,” one designer said.
They conscripted once again Wladimir Schall to work on the show soundtrack, which stemmed from in-depth conversations with the team and how music itself can cast a different aura on the show performance.
Albeit intimidating, the Pitti Uomo runway is to set new foundations for the MM6 menswear. The team is adamant to indulge in the moment and enjoy the unexpectedness of it.
“We will experience something that it’s not just ours. We, too, will see it revealing in front of us…and I think that is beautiful,” an MM6 designer said.
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