Martin Margiela is having a proper clear-out. For most people, this means binning the stained tees cluttering up the wardrobe and maybe sticking an old bike up for sale. But, for one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century, it means letting go of hundreds of grail-worthy archive pieces alongside the blueprints to one of the most important clothing brands in the history of the fashion industry. 

Last week’s announcement that Martin Margiela is auctioning some old memorabilia unsurprisingly drove fashion nerds into a frenzy. How often does one of the great designers release their archives to the public? Well, never. As Maurice Auction, the company behind the sale, notes, “This is the first time a living creator has directly collaborated with an auction house to offer their personal archive of clothing and designs.”

As usual, Margiela is an innovator. 

There’s a lot to pick from. And the just-released list of items for sale doesn’t disappoint. A total of 276 items are going under the hammer on July 9 that date from 1988, Maison Margiela’s founding year, up to 1994, over a decade before Martin departed his eponymous house in 2009.

The selection also goes far beyond just vintage clothes, though it’s packed with plenty of standouts. These include a Spring/Summer 1990 blazer handpainted white, a trademark Margiela technique, expected to fetch €91,000 (around $105,990) to a Spring/Summer 1993 necklace where white cotton ribbon ties are attached to a branch cut from a tree, an example of the designer’s boundary-pushing repurposing techniques from an era long before high fashion designers would’ve ever approached the notion of upcycling.

Each item provides an insight into the influential techniques invented and honed by Margiela’s maison, but most revealing are a series of sketches, fabric samples, and paper patterns. These are sacred texts of avant-garde fashion.

There are prototype logo designs for a little-known late-’80s Margiela project in collaboration with designer Graziella Picozzi (who recently auctioned off her own Margiela archives) and hand-drawn sketches showing how clothing should be properly folded for packaging. Folders full of designs include fabric samples and facsimile sketches for the production of Spring/Summer 1990 — the legendary collection Margiela showed in a derelict Parisian playground that inspired a famously moved Raf Simons to become a fashion designer — and original drawings of a Spring/Summer 1991 high-heeled tabi boot.

These books, full of annotations and drawings, are the closest look inside of Margiela’s brain to date. The auction even encompasses the designer’s original paper patterns, one even assumed to be from Margiela’s first-ever collection, so you could roleplay as the designer and create one of his OG designs from an OG pattern. You can basically become Margiela.

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