Maison Margiela turns its Fall/Winter 2026 campaign into the trailer for a psychological thriller that doesn’t exist. Starring Rebecca Hall and directed by Thibaut Grevet, the film revisits the Maison’s decades-long fascination with anonymity, identity and the act of disappearing.
Photo courtesy of Maison Margiela.
“In a world where the spotlight is everything, the only thing that matters is the audience.”
– Maison Margiela, Anonymity
Maison Margiela released the trailer for its new psychological thriller, the trailer for a film that, in reality, doesn’t exist. Directed by French filmmaker and photographer Thibaut Grevet, is conceived as the campaign for the Fall/Winter 2026 collection.
Rebecca Hall stars as a woman who repeatedly comes face to face with her masked double. And the masks appearing throughout the film are not just props: they are unique pieces created in the Maison’s atelier and worn by the models during the Fall/Winter 2026 show, presented in Shanghai last April.
The result is a journey into the mind of a woman experiencing the gradual dissolution of her own identity. “I feel lost. I’m not myself anymore,” she says at one point. And this is precisely where the film meets one of the most deeply rooted themes in Margiela’s history: ANONIMITY.
Hiding, subtracting, erasing identity has always been part of the Maison’s language. Even its visual minimalism speaks to this idea: a blank white label held in place by four simple stitches at each corner, recognizable precisely because of the absence of a conspicuous logo.
It all goes back to Martin Margiela, who founded the Maison in 1988 and built a presence that was as influential as it was deliberately invisible. For years, he avoided in-person interviews, refused to be photographed, and kept his private life firmly out of the spotlight. A designer who managed to turn his own absence into one of the most powerful statements in contemporary fashion.
As early as his debut Spring/Summer 1989 show, Margiela covered the faces of some of his models. The gesture stripped them of a defined identity and redirected the audience’s attention: away from the face or celebrity of the person wearing the garment, and toward the garment itself, the body, and the way the clothes come alive through movement.
Almost forty years later, that same question resurfaces in Thibaut Grevet’s film. This time, however, anonymity is not simply a way of erasing identity. It becomes a starting point for asking what happens when we can no longer recognize ourselves.
Maison Margiela’s relationship with cinema, after all, goes back a long way. Its Tokyo store, opened in 2006, even housed a small cinema, and Grevet’s project is not the first time the Maison has used film to tell the story of a collection. In 2021, the brand presented A Folk Horror Tale, directed by Olivier Dahan as part of its Artisanal project.
Margiela once again turns to cinema not simply as an advertising format, but as an extension of its creative universe. A psychological thriller about a woman haunted by her own double becomes a reflection on identity and our contemporary need to be seen.
In a world where everyone is chasing the spotlight, Maison Margiela continues to do what it has done for almost forty years: hide the face to force us to look closer.