After spending his entire career guarding his privacy, star Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela opened up his personal archives for an auction on Thursday (July 9) that raised more than a million euros.
Fans of the 69-year-old trailblazer, who retired in 2009, were able to snap up memorabilia ranging from sketches to one of his white work coats at the auction in Paris that Margiela personally supervised.
The sale of nearly 200 items raised €1.39mil (approximately RM6.47mil)), fees included, with buyers from Japan, South Korea and China heavily represented, auction houses Maurice Auction and Kerry Taylor Auctions said in a statement.
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The highest value item was a 1991 pair of Margiela's signature Tabi boots, covered in graffiti, which sold for €364,000 (RM1.69mil).
The sale lifted the veil only slightly on one of the most enigmatic characters in fashion.
"This sale is a creative act, and also a manifestation of his concept, his philosophy," auctioneer Salome Pirson from Maurice Auction said during a tour of the items.
"He's giving the public the opportunity to discover his inner world, to touch his objects, to own his personal coat, but at the same time, he is the one who is most conspicuously absent," she added.
More than 3,000 people visited to see the collection this week, which also featuring a prototype of one of the face masks he obliged models to wear to avoid distracting from his clothes.
Margiela's motivations for selling his personal items range from clearing out his storage to personally overseeing the dispersal of his possessions to collectors and institutions.
"He is 69 years old, he has no heirs, and in one way, by organising this sale, he is arranging his own legacy by putting all the potential buyers who might be interested in competition with one another," Pirson said.
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Margiela was barely ever photographed, never gave media interviews, and shunned the industry convention adopted by most of his peers of taking a bow in public at the end of a catwalk show.
In a rare effort to engage with fans, he collaborated on a retrospective of his work held at the Palais Galliera museum in Paris in 2018.
The auction also included Hermes items designed by Margiela while he worked as creative director at the French label from 1997-2003.
The items were all gifted to his late mother. – AFP
