Screening: Martin Margiela: In His Own Words
Monday, September 15, 2025 – 16:00–Monday, September 15, 2025 – 19:00
How do you document a designer who spent his career avoiding the spotlight? The fashion designer Martin Margiela never gave interviews, refused to be photographed, and distanced himself from anything resembling celebrity. Instead, his eponymous fashion house Maison Martin Margiela became a shared language, a quiet and persistent revolt where the clothes, not the name, was the signature. Martin Margiela: In His Own Words follows Margiela’s thinking through visible seams, stitched labels, and stripped constructions. This is not a film that seeks to unmask the elusive Margiela, but a raw documentary where he for the first time tells his story in his own words.
The film weaves together archival videos, photographs, and handwritten notes, with Margiela’s own voice as the throughline. With his back to the camera he recounts his formative years: childhood and education in Belgium, his fascination with concepts, details, and historical techniques, the rise of his Paris-based house, and his gradual split from the fashion world. Martin Margiela: In His Own Words is both a tribute to, and a reflection on, a designer who changed fashion history with garments that challenged form, function, and expectation. It is a candid portrait as much about a way of thinking as about a career.
After the screening, the renowned director Reiner Holzemer and producer Aminata Sambe will sit down for a conversation on how documentary film can open new insights into fashion, and why Margiela demanded a uniquely tailored approach. Holzemer has made documentaries on artists and designers for more than four decades, with a distinctive ability to capture the emotional core of creative processes. Sambe, with extensive experience producing fashion shows, offers an industry perspective shaped by proximity to designers’ work and realities. The conversation will be moderated by former Maison Martin Margiela presse attaché Else Skålvoll Thorenfeldt, who's currently ILFR's Head of Communications.
Get your tickets now via cinemateket.no. See you at Cinemateket on September 15th at 18.00!
