Margiela, be mine.

''Few of my friends know this, but I'm conducting a relationship with an invisible man. He's a 57-year-old Belgian recluse who long ago disappeared behind an oblong strip of white tape, a label with nothing on it. His last known appearance was in 1994 in New York at the now-defunct boutique Charivari, where he was seen to be a tall man in a flat cap, quietly driving journalists apoplectic by refusing to grant quotes about his collection. Since then, not a thing has been seen or heard of Martin Margiela: only robotic written pronouncements issued from a a white-painted former industrial -design school occupied by men and women in white couture coats in the Eleventh Arrondissement of Paris. These day rumours even circulate that this man doesn't exist. Based on public face of his work: his exaggerations, twists, puns and strange appropriations. There are other people who shrug him off as one of the freakiest freak shows in fashion whose clothes could only be worn by avantgarde weirdos. Ha! How wrong can they be?

What I require is straight, chic clothes of unidentifiable provenance that are turned just one or two notches up the dial toward unusual, witty, or sexy. Martin Margiela is the only designer who does that. Get into him, and you end up with a repertoire that lasts for years because, fabulously, no one can ever guess who made any of it, or when. I've lost count of the people at parties who, after staring a bit, have been forced to ask where I got my matte-black-one-shouldered jersey dress. I love it when they have to lean closer and ask again, ''Who?,'' either because they've never heard of Mr. Nobody (great!) or because they're struggling to align the information with their perceptions of Margiela as the man who shows clothes made out of party balloons (his latest ''artisanal' collection) or sofa covers (fall 2006) or wigs out of recycled fur coats (fall 1997). And call me bad, but I can't help enjoying the irritated moue that crosses some women's faces when they hear that this dress is not available any longer: She's wearing an old dress. So how come it looks so damn right now?

Wearing Margiela can bestow a satisfying cleverness upon you like that. Because he's so impersonal, his clothes become personal to you. And because his things are frequently several steps ahead of fashion (or because other designers look to him for a lead), Margiela purchases can end up reflecting glory upon you three, four seasons after you bought them because at some point, the world's caught up, and the stuff looks spot-on. Anyone who bought a jacket from his very collection in 1988 would be laughing now. It had narrow shoulders with high-set puffed sleeves, in direct opposition to the dominant padded-linebacker silhouette of the power dressing of the time. It proved so long-ranged influential, you could wear it today, and people would still come up to you and ask where they could buy it. But Margiela is so secretive, even deliberately obscurantist, he rarely takes the credit for this.

When you really analyse it, everything he does is one big dynamic contradiction. He's a so-called deconstructionist who is actually one of the best deconstructionists in the business. He's an arch to noncorporate anti-brander (the blank white labels) whose operation is actually branded through and through , from the whitewashed walls and secondhand furniture of his shops to the lab coats of his staff and white canvas shopping bags, right down to the cotton envelopes into which his press communiques are stitched. Though he is categorised by many as the most high-minded of intellectual designers, the way he converts one thing into another can be quite hilarious.....''
-by Sarah Mower-

F.S