Maison Martin Margiela

About the house

Martin Margiela, a Belgian designer born in Genk in 1957, founded the house in Paris with Jenny Meirens, a Brussels boutique owner. He had graduated from the Antwerp Royal Academy in 1979 and assisted Jean Paul Gaultier in Paris from 1984 to 1987. Margiela stayed out of the public eye: no formal interview or magazine portrait, and press contact by fax and later email, since his designs should speak for themselves.

From 1997 to 2003 he was women's wear creative director at Hermès while his own label carried on. The house became part of OTB Group, led by Renzo Rosso, who also owns Diesel, in 2002. Margiela formally left in December 2009, and no successor was named at the time. John Galliano was creative director from October 2014 until the end of 2024, and in 2015 the name dropped "Martin" to become Maison Margiela.

The perfumes are made under licence. L'Oréal's Luxury Products Division signed a fragrance licence with the house in 2008 and distributes the scents, and one commentator credits the reach of the Replica line to that licensing and distribution. Sources differ on when the first fragrances appeared. For its first perfume, the house said it wanted to explore a "green trail", simple and natural, and described Untitled as carrying the brand's codes while cultivating its own personality.

Replica takes its name from a 1994 line of the house's reproduced vintage garments, and one source dates the collection to 2012. Each scent is named for a place and year and built around a specific memory, among them Flower Market, Paris, 2011, or Tea Escape, Tokyo, 2008, credited to Fabrice Pellegrin, or At the Barber's, Madrid, 1992, credited to Louise Turner. Turner says that childhood odours stay in olfactory memory. Mutiny, from 2018, is credited to Dominique Ropion, who reportedly spent six years on it.