Maison Margiela's muses
The first time Jenny Meirens walked into Martin Margiela's studio in 1989, she was wearing a men's Levi's jacket and a pair of trousers she'd had recut at a tailor in Antwerp. Margiela noticed. By the end of the week, she was standing in front of his team, arms extended, while he pinned muslin to her frame. She became the house's first unofficial muse, though neither of them used that word. She was a collaborator, a body that moved through space in a way Margiela found honest.
Maison Margiela has never courted celebrity in the traditional sense. The designer himself refused to be photographed. The models walked shows with their faces obscured or painted white. The clothes bore no visible branding beyond a set of four white stitches on the back seam. Yet three women have come to define the house's aesthetic language, not through campaigns or red carpets, but through a quieter form of influence. They wore the clothes as they were intended: as tools, not trophies.
Jenny Meirens: the original frame
Meirens was not a model. She was a friend, a fixture in the Antwerp Six's orbit, and later a gallerist. Her proportions were ordinary. Her gait was unrehearsed. Margiela used her to test the balance of a sleeve, the fall of a skirt, the way a seam would behave under tension. She appeared in early lookbooks, often shot in grainy black and white, standing in empty rooms or against peeling walls. The clothes looked like they belonged to her, not the other way around.
What made Meirens essential was her indifference to fashion's theatrics. She moved through the studio without performance. When Margiela draped a deconstructed jacket over her shoulders, she didn't adjust her posture to accommodate it. The jacket adjusted. This was the principle that would define the house: the garment serves the body, not the reverse.
By the mid-nineties, Meirens had stepped back from the studio, but her influence remained embedded in the house's DNA. The house continued to cast models who looked like they had lives outside the runway. The clothes continued to prioritise function over spectacle. Meirens had set the template without ever intending to.
Erin O'Connor: the deconstruction years
Erin O'Connor walked her first Maison Margiela show in 1997. She was 19, angular, and six feet tall. Her face was painted white. Her hair was slicked back. She wore a jacket with the lining exposed and a skirt that looked like it had been assembled from offcuts. The audience didn't applaud until she was halfway down the runway.
O'Connor became the house's most recognisable face during its late-nineties peak, when Margiela was deconstructing tailoring and reconstructing it inside out. She walked every show from 1997 to 2000, often opening or closing. Her proportions suited the house's architectural approach. A sleeve that might overwhelm a smaller frame hung correctly on her. A high neckline that might look prim elsewhere looked austere, almost monastic.
What distinguished O'Connor was her refusal to soften the clothes. She didn't smile. She didn't pivot at the end of the runway. She walked in a straight line, turned on her heel, and walked back. The clothes were difficult, and she let them be difficult. A 1999 show featured masks made from leather gloves, fingers splayed across the models' faces. O'Connor wore one without flinching. The effect was unsettling, which was the point.
After Margiela's departure in 2009, O'Connor continued to champion the house. She wore archive pieces to events, often styling them with high-street trousers or vintage coats. In interviews, she described the clothes as collaborators, not costumes. She understood what Meirens had understood a decade earlier: the house required participation, not decoration.
Gigi Hadid: the Galliano era
When John Galliano took over as creative director in 2014, the house's relationship with celebrity shifted. Galliano brought spectacle back to the runway, but he also brought Gigi Hadid, who became the face of his first major collection in 2015. Hadid was not an obvious choice. She was commercial, Instagram-famous, and represented a kind of accessibility that seemed antithetical to Margiela's ethos.
Yet Galliano cast her deliberately. He dressed her in deconstructed denim, oversized blazers, and knits that looked like they had been unravelled and re-knit by hand. He sent her down the runway in flat boots and minimal makeup. The message was clear: the house could absorb contemporary celebrity without compromising its principles.
Hadid's influence peaked during the Artisanal collections, where Galliano revisited the house's archival techniques. She wore a dress made from vintage scarves, a coat constructed from reclaimed military blankets, and a gown that appeared to be melting off her frame. The pieces were theatrical, but they retained the house's commitment to craft. Hadid's role was to make that craft legible to a generation that had never seen Margiela's original work.
Critics argued that Hadid's presence diluted the house's mystique. Supporters countered that she brought new audiences to a brand that had spent two decades in deliberate obscurity. Both were correct. What mattered was that Hadid wore the clothes without irony. She posted them on Instagram, yes, but she also wore them to airports and dinners and fittings. She treated them as clothing, not content.
The through line
None of these women were muses in the traditional sense. They were not draped on sofas or immortalised in oil paint. They were working participants in the house's ongoing experiment. Meirens provided the body. O'Connor provided the attitude. Hadid provided the reach. Together, they demonstrated that Maison Margiela's ethos could survive translation across decades, aesthetics, and audiences.
The house has always been suspicious of beauty for its own sake. It prefers tension, imbalance, the suggestion that a garment might come apart at any moment. The women who have defined it understand this instinctively. They wear the clothes as if they might need to take them apart and reassemble them later. They don't perform elegance. They perform utility.
Galliano continues to cast models who move through the clothes rather than displaying them. The house's recent shows have featured older women, non-models, and faces that resist easy categorisation. The principle remains unchanged. The garment serves the body. The body does not serve the garment. Meirens knew this in 1989. Hadid knows it now.
