There’s a load of Margiela (in plastic bags) on sale this week

We decided to have a quick chat with Byronesque because, this week, they’re staging the second of their “Not an Auction” sales of Margiela pieces from 1989-2009 (Martin’s whole tenure) at a store on the Lowest East Side, including “runway favourite knits” and coats, oversized and underrated and Line 4 suiting. Byronesque describes it as easy to wear pieces, “still with the Margiela codes that distinguish Martin’s era from his successors, official and otherwise”. Curiously, all pieces will be sold in plastic bags, a comment on the fact secondhand clothes are becoming increasingly “disposable and tasteless”. “With ‘vintage’ and resale et al now at extreme volumes, because production of new clothes isn’t slowing down, we’re just circulating more stuff,” Gill Linton, the platform’s Editor-in-Chief, says. “The bags are intended to make people think about their ‘vintage’ consumption in the same way they think about single use plastic.” Plus, “It’s also a nod to Margiela’s re-use of plastic bags as clothing that has left a lasting legacy.”

Tell us about the ethos behind Byronesque: “Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s good.”

Back when it was frowned upon for brands to have left over clothes at the end of a season, and they didn’t believe it was worth keeping their ‘archives’, new meant better. Obviously new doesn’t mean better nor good and now that ‘vintage’ is the new ’new’, old doesn’t mean it’s good either. But it’s more complex because with the ‘vintage’ market now essentially one massive dumping ground, the words ‘rare’ and ‘iconic’, amongst many other now meaningless labels, are given to anything and mostly everything that isn’t. It refers to a lack of taste and a lack of creative integrity.

With so much vintage around now, what do you define as good?

Creative integrity. If an item captures a significant moment in fashion history, provoked without gimmicks, wasn’t mass produced and isn’t easy to figure out, then that’s good. Good old- fashioned subculture.

The first “Not an Auction” sale in Paris last year you describe as a reaction to the prices reached in recent Margiela auctions, ‘to bring some stability to buying and collecting’ – can you talk about this a little?

Auctions, by their very nature, are based on what someone is willing to pay for something in the moment. Typically, high prices are the result of bidding between a few people and/or institutions. But once a big price makes headlines, it becomes Instagram lore: if one piece from a brand sells high, everything from that brand must be important and expensive. That’s the problem. 

Determining the relevance and price of a ‘vintage’ item is not an exact science. The difference between thrift, second-hand, investments, and ‘contemporary vintage’ – what we call clothes with creative integrity – is not generally understood and price has become a shortcut for meaning. When sticker shock replaces context, design, and culture, we stop understanding why certain clothes actually matter.

And what’s special about this particular collection of Margiela?

This collection is from someone who worked with Martin at the time. It’s a self-contained wardrobe. No edit was necessary. The singular Martin Margiela uniform is evident. Androgynous with early Margiela codes that make a seemingly easy item more complex than it looks. Intelligent. Bought to be worn not to become “clothing celebrities”.

MARGIELA NOT AN AUCTION FINAL TOUR DATE. NYFW 13-15TH FEBRUARY. Assembly New York “Next Door” 168 Ludlow Street, 10002