Glenn Martens’ Wild Openness at Maison Margiela S/S26

There was a certain looseness in the air at Glenn Martens’ ready-to-wear debut for Maison Margiela Spring/Summer 2026—a wide, fearless kind of openness. It wasn’t the chaos of his couture, even though it will be welcomed with open arms. Rather, Martens found control in exposure. Gone were the eerie masks from January’s Artisanal show. In their place, mouthpieces pried open grins like a forced smile—unnerving, absurd, and completely Margiela.

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The Belgian designer dug through the house’s archives not for nostalgia, but for elasticity. He stretched Margiela’s codes into new materials and categories: spliced denim bleached to bone, leather molded into liquid silhouettes, and tailoring that swung between the boardroom and the boudoir. Jackets came light and wide-shouldered, lapels sliced clean off and replaced with hanging ties—a sly wink to the white lab coats of Margiela’s atelier.

If the Artisanal show was a fever dream, the RTW debut was its hangover—lucid, stripped of mystique, but no less haunting. Martens traded fantasy for anatomy, dissecting the brand’s structure piece by piece. You could sense the tension between restraint and revolt.

There was also humor. The forced grins weren’t merely shock tactics; they mirrored our cultural performance of composure. In Martens’ hands, fashion became a psychological study, a commentary on how much we reveal when we’re trying to conceal — almost like a confession.

Martens’ language was distortion as design. Poplin shirts tucked into drop-crotch trousers, biker jackets bonded with tape, and coats veiled in black chiffon that turned structure into shadow. Silk scarves appeared fused into collars, their illusion so perfect it was almost impolite to question it.

With this debut, Martens lets it be known he’s not inheriting Maison Margiela, but prying it open. In the gaps between grin and grimace, he found freedom—and the beginning of something thrillingly unrestrained.

Photos: MAISON MARGIELA