Finding the joy in fashion seems to be ever more difficult as time passes. Whether it be political events, economic realities or the increasing rarity of genuine novelty within the industry, every fashion week these days is marked with an asterisk reminding us that we unfortunately still exist in the real world. Fashion, at its best, offers an escape: From showing us a new way of being, or taking us to a time that has long since passed– or yet to come – fashion can create alternate realities. Discovering and building these realities is something that Walter van Beirendonck and Kidill achieved remarkably this season. 

Walter van Beirendonck and Kidill both exist between the cracks of the luxury powerhouses that dominate Paris Fashion Week. Both disrupt traditional fashion conventions in favour of finding a counterculture that embraces the alien and the weird: Walter, a legacy Belgian brand that helped define ‘80s queer fashion and ‘90s European rave culture; and Kidill, a relatively newer Japanese label that takes its inspiration from that very same ‘90s aesthetic. Both find a unique approach to what it means to be kitsch in the 21st century.

Walter this season opted for a vision of the future. Rejecting the nostalgia of vintage fashion and bygone subcultures, the designer instead focused on idiosyncratic geometric tailoring paired with beautifully crafted knits and decorated bombers. The intent was clear — create a cast of “Alien Friends”, sent here to gift the ability to see the world in a completely new way. 3D printing and AI generation supplemented English and Scottish textiles with Dutch craftsmanship to create an aesthetic not limited by time, but space and imagination. The show concluded with an extended epilogue where the models positioned themselves on custom Walter van Beirendonck couches, flashing the peace sign with their extended prosthetic fingers. The message was well received, and one hopes that these E.T.s won’t return home.

Kidill was no slouch for theatrics either. The presentation began with a meditative drone from traditional Japanese punk rock group ‘Seppuku Pistols,’ leading into an explosive show opening of loud percussion and even louder clothing. Drawing inspiration from turn of the century Harajuku fashion alongside classic London rave and punk stylings, Kidill avoided the simple recycling of these eras with clothing that felt imagined and repurposed by William Gibson himself. In this world, colour theory has been replaced by colour anarchy, letting synthetic textures and contrasting patterns create a dynamic fashion narrative led by an unforgettable cast.

ARCHIVE.pdf contributing photographer Thian Benton Fieulaine went backstage to capture both of these eclectic shows. The images juxtapose what counterculture can look like from the east and the west, and how fashion can still make us dream– when dreaming seems more difficult than ever. 


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ARCHIVE.pdf had the opportunity this men’s fashion season to go backstage for two of the most eclectic shows on the calendar and capture the behind the scenes of what it takes to make a spectacle.

Welcoming the Weird: Walter van Beirendonck meets Kidill

It’s officially a new chapter of Dries Van Noten. The name no longer just refers to the man himself, but something bigger: Dries Van Noten is now a house, with codes, principles, and a legacy to uphold. Given that Dries always avoided industry trends, it’s fitting that the successor was chosen from within, rather than a flashy name from without. Julian Klausner, who’s been with the brand since 2018 and responsible for the women’s collections for several years, is now tasked with maintaining the legacy of the house while leading it into the future. And with his debut runway collection for A/W ‘25, Klausner already found the sweet spot. 

A/W ‘25 felt very much like an extraction of balance as one of the house codes. Dries himself was a master of this: He excelled in finding the narrowest line between good and bad taste and thriving off of that tension (His S/S ‘20 collection done with Christian Lacroix providing a sublime example). The difficulty in this extraction is that Dries never really had a signature look, a singular product that people can point toward; in reality, his following adored his immaculate sensibilities, which could be amorphous from season to season. Of course, there are the clashing of prints and colors, exquisite embroideries and craftsmanship, bohemianism, or certain motifs that he favored, but these are not as easily transcribed as the shape of a shoulder or a heritage handbag. 

For Klausner, this exercise in balance began at the conceptual level: “Here, I imagined women passing through the opera, grabbing fabrics and objects, tying them with a shoelace while on a quest to find the answer to an unknown question. Behind the curtain, where creation and practice happen.” This reference emerged directly with coats using rug jacquards and curtain tassels as embellishments, the latter done more extravagantly toward the end on a multi-colored coat or dress. The opulence and austerity of the opera – also invoked by the halls of the Palais Garnier – was countered with hints of bricolage, like whipstitched shoelaces around the edges of coats or clusters of jewels on necklines. Klausner also took enlarged silk ties and scarves – a trademark DVN accessory – and turned them into chic, sumptuous dresses which settled things into a louche Belgian elegance. Here again, balance was struck, as Klausner offset the jewel-toned vibrancy with several well-tailored numbers served in black and navy. 

Dries Van Noten A/W 25 (Source: Dries Van Noten)

Dries Van Noten A/W 25 Runway look (Source: Dries Van Noten)

Dries Van Noten A/W 25 Runway Look (Source: Dries Van Noten)


Dries Van Noten A/W 25 Backstage (Source: Dazed, Photo by Morgane Maurice)

On an individual level, many looks were built around a balance of the silhouette bisected by the waist. Corset belts made several appearances, done in a brown croc-leather with those same whipstitched shoelaces. From a heavy sienna skirt with arabesque embroidery and a foldover corset waist emerged a delicate white sleeveless top with beadwork; that same skirt and waistline, this time in grey, was used with a wide-shouldered jacket. A cow print bomber jacket with gigot sleeves, gathered around the neckline, was worn with a long skirt in blush pink that narrowed the silhouette from the top down.

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Klausner follows the same intuitive approach to design shared by his predecessor. In the show notes, he mentioned playing in his family’s costume box when he was a child, and discovering all of the textures and sensations of clothing. “This collection is a celebration of that instinct: of transformation, of personal ritual, of the quiet yet powerful dialogue between past and future, which is at the heart of Dries Van Noten.” 

Speaking of transformation, the question that hung in the air before the collection was, How will the Dries woman transform? It’s a tall order to follow an industry giant, especially in a moment when creative directors are swapped out every other week. Yet Klausner arrived with confidence and a strong assertion of his own aesthetic; it almost felt like a first date with the new ‘Dries Woman.’ There was a sense of wanting to show off a little bit – the ‘personal ritual’ of getting ready to impress. Klausner certainly showed off some of the things he’s bringing to the table: the amount of draping in this collection was new, and may work to give the brand a younger appeal. At times, it felt a little more dressed up than what we have seen from Dries in the past, though it isn’t entirely new territory; A/W ‘20, done during Klausner’s tenure, and A/W ‘16 seem like relevant touch points here – (and if she were on a date to the opera, then the man taking her out might be dressed in something from men’s A/W ‘13).


Dries Van Noten F/W 20 Runway (Source: Vogue, Photo by Filippo Fior) 

Dries Van Noten F/W 16 Runway (Source : Vogue, Photo by Marcus Tondo)

Dries Van Noten Menswear F/W 13 (Source: Vogue, Photo by Yannis Vlamos)

But about that first date: you only get to make a first impression once. And Klausner took the opportunity to make a strong personal statement for his vision. If his debut offered a sense of the future for the brand, then the retired Belgian master should be happy: The house of Dries Van Noten looks to be in good hands. 

ARCHIVE.pdf visited the showroom to get a closer look at Dries Van Noten A/W ‘25. Photos by our contributing photographer Thian Benton Fieulaine.

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ARCHIVE.pdf visited the Dries Van Noten showroom for a closer look at Julian Klausner’s debut collection. 

Behind the Curtain: Dries Van Noten A/W '25 Showroom

Fall/Winter 2025 was a season of Martin Margiela. References abound: new tabi iterations debuted both within the Maison in collaboration Louboutin and without at Kiko Kostadinov; Adrian Appiolaza’s Moschino continued to collide Franco Moschino’s wit with deconstructivism; and Junya Watanabe showed wig jackets that called back to the ones shown in Margiela’s final collection for Spring 2009. Returns to the Margiela archive are nothing new; it has been years since the designer left fashion, but nods to his language appear season after season. However, behind this particular season of references was a pair of sales of pieces from the Margiela archive, with one hosted by Kerry Taylor Auctions and Maurice Auctions, and the other by Byronesque Vintage. The former sale focused on the earliest years of the label, while the latter offered a wardrobe-style collection composed of everyday pieces from seasons spanning the designer’s career. Against the backdrop of a season peppered with returns to the Martin Margiela archive, the dramatically diverging viewpoints of these two Margiela sales provide valuable insights into the work of the ever-influential designer.

The year began with Margiela: the Early Years, hosted in collaboration between Maurice and Kerry Taylor Auctions. The collection was composed of garments from the personal collections of Angela and Elena Picozzi – daughters of Martin Margiela’s former pattern-maker, Graziella Picozzi – and consisted of accessories, pieces, full looks, and even sketchbooks from the years of 1988-1994. During PFW Men’s, the pieces were on display to the public, with the auction concluding at the end of the week. The auction broke records, netting the highest prices Margiela’s archive has ever seen, topping out at a full look from Spring/Summer 1990 that sold for 101,400 euros.

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Byronesque Vintage’s Martin Margiela: Not an Auction provided a very different look into Margiela’s oeuvre. The company’s focus is on the sourcing and sale of contemporary vintage fashion, with a curatorial eye for identifying the clothes that are important enough to deserve retrospective attention. Byronesque has sold a lot of Margiela, hallmarked by a 2017 sale that drew a line out the door. Put-off by the hype, the company was seduced back into the Margiela race by the unique opportunity posed by this sale. The clothes came from Christina Ahlers, who worked as a member of Martin Margiela’s team until 2006, and represented an accumulation of clothes acquired to be worn, not preserved. They were presented on unremarkable clothing racks, in a white apartment, with white sheets over the furniture, and minimal merchandising — an incredibly Margiela setting. But this was not the carefully-curated museum selection of The Early Years — this was a wardrobe.

Iconic pieces like cigarette shoulder jackets (A/W ‘91) and ‘Doll’s Wardrobe’ sweaters (S/S ‘99) were shown alongside simple waistcoats, knits, and dresses, all possessing subtle details that remind us of the designer’s distinctive hand.

Byronesque founder Gill Linton says, “What I like about this collection is that it’s the Margiela uniform of people who were part of his world at the time. Who didn’t imagine that it would be so important decades later.” This is a sale composed of pieces of fashion history – but it is also a sale of everyday clothes.

When a designer like Margiela ascends to the realm of myth, and their work is experienced more through museum retrospectives than shop floors or daily wear, their greatness is reduced to spectacle: untouchable clothes representing unimpeachable legacies. The tactility and embodiment of their work is a luxury experienced by only the lucky few. But these are some of the qualities most important for understanding the works of great designers. This is especially true of Martin Margiela, who was at once an incredible orchestrator of artistic spectacle and the visionary architect of a way of dressing that is to be lived, not just seen. His investment in the everyday is most distilled in his A/W ‘93 collection film, which followed seven women going about their days in locations and looks of their choosing. 

Margiela’s approach celebrated the relationships we develop with our clothes – through experience, through DIY, through styling, and through their eventual destruction. The white box of the modern museum provides a blank canvas against which Margiela’s designs can express their details clearly, but its harsh light dispels that deeply personal sense of intimacy. Byronesque’s sale, presenting a wardrobe in a small Paris apartment, reclaimed some of that emotional resonance in a time when its role in Margiela’s work is often rendered invisible. 

By no means is this a criticism of The Early Years auction; this was a collection of garments the likes of which will never be seen again, and the eye-watering prices they garnered were nonetheless deserved. The face of Margiela with which they engaged deserved the deification of that auction format. But we cannot let that spectacular, legendary, historically-entrenched Martin Margiela overshadow the intimate, light-handed, personal Martin Margiela. The two characters are the product of the same team of designers, and the same body of work, and must be appreciated in tandem to fully appreciate MMM. 

Thank you to both teams for offering us opportunities to appreciate the different sides of Maison Martin Margiela.

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In a season of full of Margiela references, two contrasting auctions offer insights into two different sides of the designer’s language.

The Two Faces of Martin Margiela

The Azzedine Alaïa Foundation, housed at 18 rue de la Verrerie – where Alaïa lived and worked – is devoted to preserving his collections and life’s work. Its exhibitions offer viewers the chance to witness the precision of Alaïa’s cuts up close, where details and craftsmanship often lost in photographs and videos come alive in person. The way fabric hugs the body, the sculptural quality of a perfectly tailored suit, the seamless blend of structure and sensuality: these elements are best experienced in the physical presence of the garment.


In the current exhibition, Azzedine Alaïa, Thierry Mugler: 1980/1990—Two Decades of Artistic Affinities, curated by Olivier Saillard, that experience takes on a new dimension. Once great friends, with Mugler even playing a pivotal role in encouraging Alaïa to establish his own brand, the exhibition positions the two designers in a joint retrospective lens. By placing their work in direct conversation, the show reveals not only their shared era, but a nuanced creative dialogue. What emerges is a portrait of two designers with radically different aesthetics, yet a deeply similar mission. Both used clothing to empower women, crafting a vision of femininity that resisted the patriarchal archetype of the submissive, stay-at-home ideal. Their approach to fashion was not merely decorative; it was political. Alaïa enhanced the body’s natural lines with subtle mastery, while Mugler exaggerated and reimagined them, offering a fantasy of hyper-femininity.


But if Mugler is often remembered as the architect of the power suit—of sharp shoulders and high glamour—this exhibition also uncovers a softer, more everyday side of his work. It reframes Mugler not only as a theatrical futurist, but also as someone engaged with real women’s lives and bodies. His designs were not always about spectacle; many pieces reveal ergonomic tailoring and unexpected intimacy. Seen next to Alaïa’s meticulous construction, Mugler’s work takes on new warmth. The exhibition delves into their mutual influences, the synchronicities in their work, and their shared creative spirit. Yet, they never merged into one another; instead, they maintained their individuality while deeply appreciating each other’s artistry. Mugler once reflected on their differences, saying, “My clothes are less abstract, more in touch with reality. The body feels more at ease in them, and his are something more striking… I think that with me, Azzedine Alaïa has been able to free himself—to move towards suits with more ergonomic, sinuous lines.” This was not merely professional admiration but a rare and sincere friendship in an industry often driven by ego and competition. Mugler confided in Alaïa, previewing collections before they were shown—a gesture of trust and creative kinship. He even allowed his lifelong muse and collaborator, Zuleika, to join the Alaïa family, further intertwining their artistic worlds.


Walking through the exhibition, visitors witness how both designers constructed entire universes around their work. The staging of the garments, the interplay of light and shadow, and the careful juxtaposition of silhouettes show how their visions coexist. While Mugler projected outward, creating women who looked like chrome-plated goddesses from the future, Alaïa turned inward—carving quiet elegance from restraint. Two different expressions of power, two sculptors of the female body, both believing in her agency. At a time when fashion is often dictated by algorithms and fast trends, this exhibition offers something else entirely: a return to intimacy, to storytelling, to substance. And at its core, it is about women—not just as muses or consumers, but as collaborators, protagonists, and icons. Mugler and Alaïa didn’t just design for women. They listened to them. They admired them. And they built legacies that honored their strength, complexity, and beauty.



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The Azzedine Alaïa Foundation's exhibition shows the strength, complexity, and beauty shared between these designers.

Mugler & Alaïa: Two Decades of Artistic Affinities 

Keywords such as “deconstruction,” “subversion,” or “avant-garde” often lean more towards the ready-made analysis of Rei Kawakubo’s designs, rather than reflecting genuine paradigms of creation. This may call for a more rigorous reading of the issues she mobilizes with each collection, while still acknowledging the persistence of practical and technical articulations that, for their part, remain intact.

*Comme des Garçons A/W 2025 Womenswear Collection. Photography by Nikita Laganovskis (@nikitalaganovskis).*

The subtext of A/W 2025 offers an entry point that the garment itself clarifies: “Recently we feel that big business, big culture, global systems, world structures maybe are not so great after all. There is also strong value in small. Small can be mighty.” 

This idea is conveyed through an exacerbation of volume and a geometry rendered relentless, imposed upon the various models. Fabrics such as Prince of Wales checks, tartan, and blue striped suits — characteristics of institutional or bureaucratic wardrobes — are here made supple, distended, and almost dreamlike, offering an easy analogy with the Möbius strip. Indeed, through twisting and hypertrophy, these garments carry both the monumental nature they evoke while simultaneously signifying a critique of that very monumentalism. The theatrical figures with velvet pleats, characters with oversized and asymmetrical skirts and drapings, are so many illustrations of a symbolic power increase that, once overwhelming, reveals its sometimes burlesque nature. The discourse on 'small' finds an echo in the meticulousness and skill evident in each papier-mâché headpiece, each assemblage of tulle with draping, where nothing seems left to chance.

*Junya Watanabe A/W 2025 Womenswear Collection. Photography by Thian Benton Fieulaine (@tbfieulaine).*

The filiation of Watanabe’s work is unequivocal. His A/W 2025 collection stands as an homage and an explicit love letter to Jimi Hendrix, the collection emulating rock archetypes with a flourish of zippered denim or leather jackets, long-haired textures and sunglasses. The show’s music also anchors the collection within the framework of a reminiscence, from which the designer’s earliest memories of fashion took place. The music corresponds to the 2024 release of a series of previously unreleased Hendrix studio sessions, which propelled Watanabe several years into the past through this vivid Madeleine de Proust.

But opting for cosplay or a faithful reproduction of the archetype in question would be far too simple. Watanabe, in turn, seeks out another framework, another standard for reinscribing clothing as material of distortion and alteration: Cubism. Perfectos, trench coats, or bombers (pillars of the contemporary wardrobe) feature oversized pyramidal protrusions, immense rectangular structures enveloping shoulders or hips. Frames and visible armatures are incorporated, converting the daily wardrobe into a terrain for spectacle, deformity, or play. (Still on the idea of paradoxes existing in the same space : underneath the extreme jackets were a lot of really wearable clothes.) The mode of fragmentation, the process of accentuation, is noticeably similar to Kawakubo’s; let’s just say the focal point is placed on different emblems. The pinnacle of this exercise in deformation perhaps finds form in the jacket composed of two inverted Dr. Martens boots replacing the sleeves, a radicalization of the perfecto’s distortion that borders on the absurd. As a structural matrix, the piece suspends functionality in favor of a deliberate interrogation of its formal and symbolic dimensions.

*Noir Kei Ninomiya A/W 2025 Womenswear Collection. Photography by Puck Cato Verheul (@puck_verheul).*

The positioning of the Noir show is different, and attempting to outline a thematic triptych would amount to excessive generalization. Almost the entire show unfolds to a dissonant piano procession by Yasuaki Itakura. It is upon this absence of melody that figures emerge, their lexicon rooted in biomorphism, the imitation of natural forms through technical materials. This is made explicit through glossy resins and plasticized fringes reminiscent of scales or feathers, while the towering 3D-printed headpieces recall antlers. Ultimately, this combination of craftsmanship and complex material expression allows, as Ninomiya has demonstrated for over a decade, for clothing to be treated as an organic growth around the body, where symbiosis always operates on a sensitive plane. 

The final two minutes of the show form a last, colorful act: the erratically played piano notes vanish, giving way to a techno-infused 'Ode to Joy' by Hakushi Hasegawa, a longtime collaborator of Ninomiya. Models adorned with ribbons, rainbows, and pompoms contrast with the rest of the collection. It marks a return to a stance evoking childhood, carefreeness, or at the very least, a less frictional position — an almost escapist shift, far less imbued with apprehension or vertigo than the opening. One will recall that similar thematic concerns were already at work in earlier collections by Ninomiya, the closest being A/W ’24. The presence of a childhood grammar (hula hoops, scoubidous, rainbow tutus) was then rendered diffuse across the entire set of looks. This time, it is reaffirmed as a final tour de force in A/W 2025, tending toward an understanding of the “small” as the visual discourse of an age carried by playfulness, bliss, and a sense of calm.

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When form and proportion allow each designer to reflect on grotesque power, distorted archetypes and the organic.

Thian Benton Fieulaine

Writer

Welcoming the Weird: Walter van Beirendonck meets Kidill

Photographer

Welcoming the Weird: Walter van Beirendonck meets Kidill

Behind the Curtain: Dries Van Noten A/W '25 Showroom

The Two Faces of Martin Margiela

Mugler & Alaïa: Two Decades of Artistic Affinities

Beyond Monumentalism: Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, & Noir Kei Ninomiya A/W 2025