Maison Margiela’s Haute Couture Spring 2026 was a fever dream of technical mastery and subversive elegance—and the menswear offerings were anything but secondary. Now under the artistic direction of Glenn Martens, the house entered a new chapter that flirted with the grotesque, the glamorous, and the gallant.
For his couture debut, Martens fused deconstructed silhouettes with razor-sharp tailoring. Think: oversized trenches turned inside out, broad-shouldered jackets cut from crushed vinyl, and pieced-together waistcoats with raw, exposed seams. Every look challenged what “menswear” could mean under the lens of haute couture.
Martens carried over Margiela’s tradition of faceless storytelling—models walked masked or partially obscured, leaving the clothes to speak for themselves. This season, they whispered gothic poetry: black patent leather trousers, draped sheer tops, and stiff ruffled collars suggested a tortured romantic from a post-apocalyptic Paris.
In true Margiela fashion, the materials told their own stories—upcycled tweeds, lacquered denim, plasticized cottons. Martens borrowed from workwear and reimagined it through a couture prism. One standout: a military-style overcoat unzipped from neck to hem, morphing into a cape that dragged ominously behind.
The collection walked a tightrope between fluidity and structure, frequently blurring lines of gender. Skirts layered over slashed trousers, waistlines cinched like corsets, and shoulders exaggerated to surreal proportions.
While much of the spotlight remains on Martens’ women’s couture, his menswear edit proved just as daring, cerebral, and couture-worthy. This wasn’t about wearable menswear—it was about craft, storytelling, and pushing boundaries.
With this debut, Martens not only honored Margiela’s legacy of avant-garde tailoring, he reasserted the place of men in couture. Not as accessories—but as bold protagonists.
