© Maison Margiela

Although already present in Osaka for many years, Maison Margiela has expanded with a second boutique at Shinsaibashi PARCO, a newly opened department store and mall which has become the city’s fashion hub du jour. The store is situated on the ground floor and occupies a 130 sqm. (1,399 sq.ft.), featuring the brand’s newest design codes as laid down by creative director John Galliano and Amsterdam-based practice Studio Anne Holtrop. The chosen aesthetic design was first introduced in a gypsum-cast set at the brand’s Artisanal Autumn/Winter 2018 show in Paris, and it interprets its iconoclast codes in façade and interiors. As such, the store is an abstracted and inviting environment rooted in the notion of appropriating the inappropriate. Familiar shapes skew in form, as they lean and fold around the demarcation of the space, drawing on ideas of dressing in haste native to Maison Margiela’s vocabulary.

Hand-cast individually in textile moulds, the surfaces of the plaster walls retain the memory of fabric texture, sculpting dents, and evoke the notion of hand-spun tactility. Retained in their natural shade of plaster, the structures are a nod to the practice of anonymity of the lining, the house term for revealing the inside of a garment traditionally concealed and revealing the inner workings. Misfit furniture is designed in the memory of classic objects, but is deconstructed in form. The technique of décortiqué is applied in shelves, display tables and seats carved in stained travertine, while the natural indentations are filled with colour-contrasting epoxy resin in optical white. In stark contrast, the ceilings and walls of fitting rooms are painted in a dark-green high gloss almost black hue which reference Japanese lacquer cabinets. The new Maison Margiela boutique stocks men’s and women’s apparel, accessories, shoes and fragrances.

Maison Margiela
Shinsaibashi PARCO, 1-8-3 Shinsaibashi, Ground Floor (Shinsaibashi)
Osaka 542-0085
Telephone: +81 6 62103895
Daily 10-8

© Maison Margiela