© Maison Margiela

Last Fall, first-year students in the MFA Fashion Design and The Arts programme at Parsons Paris started a special collaboration with MM6 Maison Margiela. The students were given a creative brief by the renowned fashion house and worked for five months under the guidance of the Parsons Paris faculty and the MM6 Maison Margiela creative team. They were challenged to reinterpret the MM6 Maison Margiela philosophy and house codes from a personal, forward-thinking, artistic, and design-led point of view. Additionally, the students were assigned one of the following iconic MM6 Maison Margiela themes: Trompe-l’œil, Utilitarian, Multifunctional, Ready when worn, Circle, Self-reference, and Unexpected matches. Within their assigned theme, each student has designed three variations on three garments or objects in which the same item changes its appearance, tactility and character by altering its proportion, sizing and materiality. Actually, this was also the concept of the very first collections of MM6 Maison Margiela.

The students have been encouraged to have a strong focus on sustainability, using leftover materials provided by the company partner and exploring the use of deadstock, second-hand and unconventional materials. Students also edited a newspaper, a format often used in Maison Margiela’s history, to document their creative process. Instead of focusing just their own body of work, they photographed each other’s collections in different arrondissements of Paris, casting an unconventional group of characters which included their families, colleagues, and friends; this was also a nod to the inclusive cast of models and muses used by Maison Margiela since the birth of the fashion house in 1989. The creative exchange between MM6 Maison Margiela and the MFA Fashion Design and The Arts programme at Parsons Paris will officially open on Thu – May 11 (5pm-8pm) for a six-day showcase. Mind you, opening attendees will receive a copy of the MM6 x Parsons Paris publication.

Parsons Paris
45 rue St.-Roch (Marais)
75001 Paris
Daily 10am-6pm

© Maison Margiela