Dress

This dress, from the fall/winter 1997–98 collection by Maison Martin Margiela, is made up of two panels of woven fabric, or “coupons,” stitched together. The panels are ended by a selvedge imprinted with “Made in England…Super 100…Worsted,” which indicates that these were the last parts of a roll of fabric.
The collection featured garments that looked as though they were still in the process of being made, a theme carried over from spring/summer 1997. Margiela utilized large white basting stitches, exposed shoulder pads, bodices that looked like Stockman dress forms, and coats that seemed to be made out of pattern paper.

The concept behind this collection was to show the different stages of the creation of a garment in the couture atelier: this dress shows the labor and time involved in the construction of handmade couture pieces by being unfinished. Its simple construction technique recalls the most elemental of Classical Grecian garments, the chiton, which was made by stitching two rectangular pieces of fabric together along the side seam, forming a cylinder with its top edge and hem unstitched. This dress demonstrates Margiela’s (de)construction techniques, utilizing the process of constructing a garment as an aesthetic trope unto itself. Its planar construction can be compared to non-Western forms of dress such as the Greek chiton and the Japanese kimono.