Lafayette Anticipations invites Martin Margiela to take possession of all its exhibition spaces. The Belgian designer's conceptual approach has revolutionized both clothing and fashion codes. While there are many references to art in his creations, through trompe l'oeil, white monochromes or fashion shows in the form of happenings, the designer's artistic practice has remained totally unknown until now. Yet, from drawing to sculpture to collage, Martin Margiela has never ceased to develop a universe charged with the same obsessions for fragmented bodies, anonymity, recycling and experimentation.

Graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 1980, he met the Antwerp Six, a group of designers revealed in the 1980s as the new wave of Belgian fashion. He moved to Paris in 1984 where he joined Jean Paul Gaultier as assistant to the fashion designer and in 1988 he was the first of this generation to found his own house, which he left by surprise twenty years later, in 2009. Since then, he has devoted his work exclusively to the visual arts. Lafayette Anticipations' invitation to him today finally makes it possible to consider Martin Margiela's work as a total artistic approach.