At Pitti Uomo, guest designer MM6 Maison Margiela goes to the dark side

In 2006, Martin Margiela brought his eponymous maison to Florence for a one-off show at the then-disused Teatro Puccini, a former cinema built to entertain workers of the vast tobacco factory next door. Presenting his ‘menswear line 10’ (led by designer Sebastian Meunier), the event was touted as a ‘white out’, with the theatre’s interior painted matte white for the occasion (white was long Margiela’s favoured hue). Models arrived on white scooters or in white limousines; in lieu of a traditional runway show, models briefly darted through the gathered crowd before picking up a drink at the bar and partying long into the night.

The occasion was part of Pitti Uomo, the historic Florentine menswear fair that each season invites a series of ‘guest designers’ to host runway shows across the city (running since the 1970s, previous editions have hosted Raf Simons, Martine Rose, Jean Paul Gaultier, Thom Browne, Telfar, Grace Wales Bonner, and several others). Two decades on, marking the beginning of men’s fashion month, it was the turn of MM6 Maison Margiela – the Maison Margiela offshoot which launched in 1997 as a more approachable offshoot of the avant-garde house – to play guest star at the event, as well as marking its very first dedicated menswear show (typically MM6 hosts a co-ed show in Milan during womenswear week).

MM6 Maison Margiela at Pitti Uomo A/W 2025

The MM6 team, which is run as a collective rather than having named designers, chose the Tepidarium del Roster – a 19th-century glasshouse in the city’s Giardino dell’Orticoltura – to host the A/W 2025 show. With standing-room-only (an echo of Martin Margiela’s anarchic early shows for the house) guests clamoured to see the nightlife-inflected looks, which MM6 described as ‘an exercise in masculine dressing, the MM6 Maison Margiela way... straightforward, item-driven and eminently not narrative.’

As such, the collection evoked a mood rather than anything more thematic, with various textures of black – from glossy leathers and plastified knits to opulent velvet – and narrow tailoring lending a satisfyingly sleazy, after-dark mood reminiscent of the louche on-stage uniforms of bands like Suede and Pulp (indeed, the latter’s ‘This is Hardcore’ provided the show’s soundtrack). The team said they had also been inspired by photographs of Miles Davis, as well as Leopold von Sacher-Maso’s sadomasochistic novel Venus in Furs. Leather gloves and wipe-clean fabrications were a nod to kink.

‘A sensual vision of the man as both the subject and the object of desire,’ the collective concluded of the show, which marked the continuing expansion of the label, which in recent seasons has enjoyed a resurgence, helped by the success of John Galliano’s vision for Maison Margiela (a role he left in December 2024) alongside buzzy collaborations with Salamon, Supreme and Timex. At the show’s end, the models dispersed into the crowd towards the bar, where the party continued. In the dark of the dancefloor, the clothes looked more than at home.

maisonmargiela.com
pittimmagine.com