Analysis Of Maison Margiela S/S 24

John Galliano’s Maison Margiela S/S 2024 Artisanal Haute Couture collection centers on themes of emotional decay, identity, and transformation. Drawing heavily from the glamour and darkness of 1920s and 30s of Paris, Galliano builds a world where each model becomes a character shaped by history, mood, and physical distortion. The collection blends beauty with eeriness, using deconstructed silhouettes and dramatic body manipulation to evoke both vulnerability and power.

Maison Margiela S/S 24 Look 35

A major source of inspiration comes from Paris’s underworld during the interwar years. Galliano pulls from Brassaï’s portraits of nightlife outsiders, the moonlit shadows beneath Pont Alexandre III where the show was staged and the uncanny presence of porcelain dolls. Pat McGrath’s months-in-development glossy “porcelain” makeup deepened the illusion, while references to cabaret, vampires, and nocturnal life framed the collection as a haunting journey through the city after dark.

The collection also reflects the period’s shifting social and artistic landscape. Post-WWI Paris saw women adopting androgynous fashion, rejecting tradition and embracing practicality, a spirit mirrored in Galliano’s deconstruction of the female form. Influences from surrealism, Cubism, and Dada appear in his asymmetric cuts, exposed structures, and fractured garments. An underlying theme of the show is despair, which echos the economic instability and rising political tension of the era, anxiety masked by glamour.

Maison Margiela S/S 24 Look 8

Galliano’s broader fashion philosophy shapes the collection’s intensity. Through techniques like décortiqué and the reuse of old or discarded materials, he treats imperfection as a narrative device. His return to fashion after personal controversy has deepened his focus on identity, memory, and transformation, allowing the Artisanal line to serve as a space for raw storytelling rather than commercial design. Each garment becomes a study in construction, emotion, and reconstruction.

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The garments analyzed in the paper illustrate these themes clearly from a ghostlike lace dress paired with a tightly cinched corset and historically rooted merkin, to a man wrapped protectively in an oversized trench coat, to a distorted pinstripe suit battered by imagined wind and rain. These looks embody decay, anonymity, and psychological tension, using exaggeration, texture, and performance to immerse the viewer in Galliano’s nocturnal Paris. Ultimately, the S/S 24 Artisanal collection operates not just as fashion, but as a haunting theatrical portrayal of longing, vulnerability, and the complex humanity found in the shadows of the past. If you want to read my more in depth analysis my paper is below!