For Maison Margiela Spring Summer 2027, Glenn Martens turns the tension between structure and fluidity into a study of Maison Margiela’s most enduring codes — from disrupted tailoring and exposed linings to sculptural draping, airbrushed surfaces and accessories that challenge their own construction.
For Maison Margiela Spring Summer 2027, Glenn Martens builds the collection around two apparently simple opposites: HARD and SOFT. The starting point comes directly from the traditional organisation of Parisian ateliers, historically divided between Tailoring — structure and construction — and Flou, dedicated to dressmaking and draping. A more wearable version of Maison Margiela Folders Collection is how to interpret the new Spring Summer 2027.
Outerwear: Coats and Jackets
The trench coat, one of fashion’s most recognisable archetypes, is an immediate starting point. Internal hardened panels interrupt the body, cutting horizontally across the waist or extending vertically along the silhouette. Structure is no longer something concealed inside a garment; it becomes the reason for its shape.
Tailoring follows the same principle. Jackets and waistcoats are folded inward so that their conventional buttoning disappears, while the creases themselves are reinforced. Even when unfolded and worn more traditionally, the garment retains the memory of its previous position.
It is an idea deeply connected to the Margiela vocabulary: transformation without completely erasing the original object. A jacket is never “just a jacket” for Maison Margiela Spring Summer 2027 reveals another possibility.
Dresses
The softer side of the collection is equally dependent on structure.
Fluid tops and dresses are draped from hardened panels that curve away from the chest, creating balcony-like forms without the constriction of a conventional corset. Elsewhere, corsetry appears almost exploded open, becoming the foundation from which jersey falls into deep cowls.
Oversized reinforced darts cut through otherwise soft dresses, pushing fabric away from the body and creating unexpected sculptural volumes.
The contradiction becomes the point: hardness allows softness to become more expressive. Rather than treating structure and fluidity as opposing aesthetics, Martens shows how one can generate the other.
Among the collection’s most immediate images are two deeply draped dresses carrying spray-painted birds: an eagle and a crane. The paintings are conceived in relation to the closed garment, so that once the fabric is opened and draped across the body, the image fractures with it.
It is difficult not to think of Gerrit Jacob. The young German designer has made airbrushing one of the most recognisable elements of his visual language, particularly through figurative imagery applied to garments and oversized silhouettes. Having selected Jacob for S|STYLE – Denim Edition 2025, I had already seen how decisively this technique can define his work: his airbrushed treatment became one of the most distinctive elements of the look he developed for the project.
The proximity between that language and Margiela’s spray-painted pieces is striking enough to raise an intriguing question about whether Jacob may have had some involvement in their development.
For now, however, the official Maison Margiela show notes do not credit a collaboration, so it remains an observation rather than a confirmed fact. On these dresses, the airbrushed image is not merely decoration. Construction transforms the artwork itself: the body moves, the drape opens and the image breaks apart. Surface, garment and gesture become inseparable.
Two-piece set
Some of the collection’s strongest silhouettes come from what initially appears to be one of the simplest formulas in a wardrobe: a top and a skirt.
Martens uses the combination almost as a laboratory for the HARD and SOFT idea. Structured balcony tops push away from the body while wrap skirts fall or extend beneath them. Floral jacquards are fortified, then interrupted by humble cotton panels at the waist. Elsewhere, dresses are constructed to look like separates, with contrasting sections deliberately creating the illusion of a top paired with a skirt.
What looks like a conventional two-piece can actually be a single garment; what seems fluid may be internally reinforced; an elaborate jacquard can suddenly meet the simplicity of cotton exactly where the eye expects continuity.
There is also something distinctly contemporary in these combinations. They offer a strong silhouette without depending on the traditional idea of a complete dress, allowing each part of the body to be treated differently: constructed above, wrapped below; rigid against fluid; decorative against utilitarian.
Maison Margiela SS27: Bags and Shoes
The new Ghost bags begin with familiar archetypes — briefcases, weekenders and vanity cases — and remove their traditional hard structures, leaving them unexpectedly soft while retaining recognisable hardware.
The 5AC is treated with increasingly supple leather, while jewellery appears caught inside mesh and crystals are enclosed in netting.
Footwear works through absence. Heel-less boots, pumps, loafers and lace-ups challenge one of the most basic elements of shoe construction, while archival Tabi forms coexist with newer silhouettes.
Even the collection’s most extreme object follows the same logic: flea-market silverware — teapots, plates and spoons — is flattened and moulded around the body to create a rigid metallic form. The everyday object is never allowed to remain only what it was designed to be.
Menswear
The foundations are familiar to the ones of womenswear: tailoring, tuxedos, trench coats, denim, leather jackets, shirts and trousers. But almost every archetype contains something that destabilises its expected construction.
Suit jackets and waistcoats have their buttoning folded away. Tuxedo trousers carry supersized satin bands down their sides. Shirts acquire hardened bib-like fronts, while collars are altered, stitched down or partially removed. Denim is cut with exaggerated seam allowances, or panels are removed and turned upside down so that the original fading suddenly appears in the wrong place.
These gestures are particularly effective because the menswear never loses contact with the idea of a recognisable wardrobe.
A grey houndstooth suit is still a suit. A leather jacket remains a leather jacket. Jeans remain jeans. Yet the details refuse to behave normally. Even the apparently casual pieces participate in the exercise: a MARGIELA logo is printed in reverse on the inside of a T-shirt so that it reads correctly through the fabric, while other garments expose raw cuts, displaced construction lines and surfaces designed to look already lived in.
The result is that the everyday male uniform is here subjected to Margiela’s habit of questioning what is front, back, inside, outside, finished or unfinished.
