This research explores the intricate relationship between fashion, space, performance, collaboration, and anonymity. By using Belgian fashion brand Maison Martin Margiela’s shows from 1988 to 1998 as the main case studies, it investigates how they position themselves as subversive situated practices within the city of Paris. The brand instilled an emphasis on space — whether through its incongruous locations, its relationship to the city’s urban fabric and daily life, or its carefully considered interiors.

A brief presentation of Martin Margiela, followed by a short history of the fashion show, is essential to understand the context of the Maison’s emergence. This research proceeds from a macro-scale reading of the city, through a meso-scale analysis of the Maison’s direct interactions with the urban and social fabric, to a micro-scale focus on the fashion show itself. Each section is supported by selected case studies that illustrate, respectively: spatial and symbolic displacement; the integration of everyday life and the importance of participation; and finally, the aesthetic and artistic dimension of the fashion show as a performance in its own right.

By compiling information from the twenty shows of the Maison’s first decade, I was able to map the presentations across Paris and create a corresponding table. This process revealed patterns and led to a typology of venue categories: repurposed, abandoned, terrain vague, multiple, showroom, dérive, and event space. The research is strongly anchored in archival study, where visual material was carefully examined at the Fashion Museum Antwerp’s library. A close examination of primary and secondary sources completes the methodology, spanning the disciplines of fashion, urban studies, sociology, and philosophy.

The Belgian brand was founded by Martin Margiela and late business partner Jenny Meirens. Margiela himself is a private figure who, throughout his tenure as artistic director until 2008, chose to remain anonymous by giving interviews only as a collective rather than as an individual. This distanced him from the cult of the designer’s personality that became so prevalent in the 1980s¹. The Maison’s ethos revolved around the emphasis on the sartorial quality of garments through the veiling of models’ faces during shows, its no-advertising policy², and its avoidance of celebrity culture. All of these elements deliberately distanced the Maison from dominant capitalist structures.

The fashion industry undergoes constant shifts in tradition and norms, but the late twentieth century was particularly notable for the fashion show’s increasingly spectacular and constructed identity.³ The 1980s were marked by excesses in clothing, presentation, and pattern. During the 1990s, the Parisian fashion-scape witnessed a tension between two extremes: the overly theatrical and extravagant shows of designers such as John Galliano and Alexander McQueen⁴, and the more subversive, ‘gritty’ approach of avant-garde designers such as Rei Kawakubo.

Maison Martin Margiela emerged within this context, using the fashion show as a mise-en-scène that not only reflected society but also produced and reinforced social values and behaviours, aiding in ‘fashioning a modern, reflexive self.’ Margiela’s shows deliberately resisted spectacle. They created ‘heterotopic spaces’ by staging presentations ‘in the midst of liminal, interstitial, or relic spaces’⁵, echoing the strategies of contemporary art installations that rejected the glitz of the catwalk.⁶

Looking at the mapped shows, several stand out for their peripheral locations in contrast to the centrality of the first arrondissement, where Paris Fashion Week traditionally unfolds. The Autumn-Winter 1995–1996 show, for instance, was held under a circus tent in the Bois de Boulogne, west of the city. The physical travel induced by this offbeat location challenged the usual comfort and proximity enjoyed by fashion professionals. At the Maison, codes were often subverted through symbolic inversion. Similarly, after a journalist remarked that the clothes resembled those found in a charity shop, the Maison staged its next show at the Salvation Army headquarters. Of particular interest is the notoriety of the building itself — designed by Le Corbusier in 1933 — yet the Maison made no reference to the architectural landmark. Instead, the focus shifted to what the space represented.

Through various iterations, the Maison fully integrated everyday life into its presentation format. Through short films and collaborations with friends and clients, Margiela positioned his practice within a participatory art logic as defined by art historian Claire Bishop, who describes it as the involvement of many people while avoiding the ambiguities of ‘social engagement’⁷. The Maison also welcomed the unexpected. During the triple-location presentation format of the Autumn-Winter 1997–1998 show, the ensemble concluded the performance by marching through the streets of the 10th arrondissement, where models, brass-band members, guests, and passers-by mingled together. By involving non-professional models and direct audience participation in overlooked sites, Margiela reconfigured perceptual boundaries, fostering new forms of presentation and experience.

Finally, by drawing on philosopher Jacques Rancière’s concept of aisthesis, the Maison’s shows reveal a coherent world-building project — a series of aesthetic scenes. The fashion show thus becomes a full performance, its reality accessible only as an ephemeral happening bound to a specific site and moment in time.⁸ Theoretically, these shows can be read as aesthetic performances: simultaneously site-specific and heterotopic. The tension between the specificity of a site and the ‘otherness’ of heterotopia becomes activated in the performative moment of the show. Ultimately, these performances contribute to a revaluation of the forgotten and pay homage to memory and place. By returning to the essence of sites and acknowledging their histories, they echo de Solà-Morales’s argument that in ‘forgotten places, the memory of the past seems to predominate over the present’⁹. Moreover, this research situates the Maison’s collection presentations within architectural history, revealing how an external cultural practice such as fashion can alter the way the city is experienced and traversed, particularly in forgotten or overlooked locations.