Maison Margiela is putting an exclamation point at the tail end of fashion week in Shanghai, staging its fall 2026 fashion show there on April Fool’s Day and kicking off a multifaceted “brand moment” spanning nearly two weeks and flagpole events across four Chinese cities.
“April 1 fits very well with our personality,” Maison Margiela chief executive officer Gaetano Sciuto said wryly in an exclusive interview, revealing the full-court press in China at a time when most European brands are staging destination shows in America.
“We definitely need to grow our community and to talk about our DNA, our values, our codes,” he said in his bright, white office, sparsely decorated with a fig tree and a painting resembling a just-erased blackboard. “If you think about the history of Margiela, every time there’s a Margiela show, there’s something to talk about.…Whether or not you’re in favor, you have an opinion. We spark conversations.”
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Under the title “Maison Margiela/Folders,” the brand moment includes:
- A one-week exhibition in Shanghai dedicated to Artisanal couture pieces from 1989 through to 2025, when Glenn Martens made his runway debut at the house.
- An exhibition in Beijing delving into anonymity, a key code of the house stemming back to the founder Martin Margiela’s Greta Garbo-like ways — and the face-obscuring masks that have been a feature of the brand since the Belgian maverick arrived on the international fashion scene.
- An exhibition in Chengdu showcasing the split-toe Tabi shoe collections of 10 Maison Margiela enthusiasts.
- A two-day immersive experience in Shenzhen where locals can bring in their own garments and transform them with white paint, as the house has been doing to chairs, lamps, you-name-it since 1988.
In addition, Maison Margiela plans to share all its folders related to the events via Dropbox, letting anyone in the world sift through detailed digital files, from the call-time for models at the Shanghai fashion show to the documentation about what’s being shipped to China for the various events.
“Honestly, I don’t think any brand ever did that, to basically open our archives, our files, to show how the project came about,” Sciuto said. “I would say this is for sure the biggest global brand moment we ever had.”
Maison Margiela only entered China in 2019, quickly scaling up to 26 brand stores.
“So we’re a very young brand in China, and it’s probably the reason we’re doing this project,” Sciuto said. “I don’t think we spent enough time educating on what Margiela is, and I think it’s important.
“People want to understand the values of the brand they’re buying,” the executive explained. “I wanted to be in China because I feel there is a community there that does not yet understand exactly who we are. Yes, we have a very strong community, but it’s small and China is an important market for us, so the potential for us is much bigger.”
He noted that Maison Margiela attracts “a very young fashion client in China, driven by females,” with ready-to-wear and shoes the leading categories.
The coed fall 2026 collection will include a few linchpin accessories, including the new Box bag, and an extended family of shoes called Heel-less with hidden wedges or heels “that Glenn designed, coming from the Martin archives.”
A seasoned luxury executive with a calm demeanor and a piercing gaze, Sciuto joined Margiela in mid-2023 from Giorgio Armani, where he had been CEO of its Americas division. His résumé also includes nearly 11 years at Fendi.
Upon arrival he spent considerable time going through the archives to better understand the history and legacy.
“This maison, which is only 40 years old, has a level of heritage and storytelling that is second-to-none honestly,” he said. “We all know Martin was an innovator for his times. We know as well a lot of brands copied Martin, and many of the things we do here. So the surprise to me was that the legacy was even bigger than I thought.
“But then the negative surprise is that Margiela is very well known within the industry, but the awareness outside the industry was not as big as I thought,” he continued. “Therefore it gives us the opportunity to story tell about who we are. And I think that’s a big opportunity.”
Along with the Antwerp Six, Martin Margiela put the small Belgian city of Antwerp on the international fashion radar, founding his house in 1988 and introducing cleft-toed boots, deconstructed clothes and all-white stores to the fashion lexicon.
He also earned a reputation for stirring up controversy and pushing fashion ideas to the extreme, as in his use of oversize silhouettes and his iconoclastic runway presentations. He often staged shows in venues like car parks, vacant lots or empty subway trains, giving his clothes a plain white label with no brand name.
Italian industrialist Renzo Rosso’s Only the Brave Srl swept in and bought a majority stake in the house in 2002 and the founding designer made his final exit in 2009, leaving an anonymous team to carry on his work.
In 2014, Rosso brought on British fashion star John Galliano, who logged an eventful decade at the house, catapulting its global notoriety and fashion credentials.
While the company does not break down revenues by brand, market sources estimate revenues at Maison Margiela are around 600 million euros, with the majority of sales stemming from directly owned retail and online sales.
Sciuto declined to give numbers, but he described 2025 as “very good” for Maison Margiela.
“I can tell you that our growth was at the percentage of the best-in-class you can find in the market right now,” he said. “Of course, our size probably is not as big as the major houses, but we’re growing, we’re growing every year, and we’re growing organically. This is not because we are opening stores. We’re growing in all the channels. We’re growing in all the countries.”
And while acknowledging that economic and geopolitical conditions in 2026 are challenging, “I believe that we will grow again — how much growth depends on the market.”
Scuito cited positive reactions to Martens’ first designs, with “a certain number of clients buying couture” and the in-house atelier starting to deliver pieces now.
“There’s great potential,” he said, while cautioning that quantities are limited given the atelier’s capacity and the work required to realize his fantastical designs.
Martens’ first ready-to-wear collection will start reaching stores later this month and early March, with activations planned around its arrival in stores. Scuito would not give a percentage, but described the commercial showroom last fall after the Paris runway show in Paris as “very, very good.”
“Glenn is taking Margiela more back to the DNA of the brand,” he said. “John did an amazing job for 10 years, and he took the brand to a level of luxury. I think now we need to take where John put us and using Glenn’s incredible talent of conceptual design and also his understanding of young generations and mix the two.”
Martens “also brought a way of working, which has been very well received by the teams. He has opened the doors, and is working with all departments. So the moment is positive,” Sciuto said.
“Margiela historically has been a house of a collective belief and collective decision-making,” he continued. “There are so many talented people here, and creativity is everywhere.…I think that we need to realize that Margiela is a school of creativity.”
During Galliano’s tenure, Maison Margiela shows were sporadic. The plan with Martens is to stage two rtw shows a year, and one Artisanal couture.
“Having a systematic presence makes the creativity of the maison really strive, and also lets people experiment, which I think is important at a house like ours,” Sciuto said.
Japan remains Maison Margiela’s most important market, and last year it opened its first locations in Canada and Mexico, with a few more to come this year, including in Vancouver.
Sciuto said the U.S. remains a key expansion priority, with a “bigger push” there programmed for 2027.
As for his biggest challenge, Sciuto said it’s balancing the need to grow while staying true to the brand DNA.
“[Margiela] has a very, very specific positioning, and I think it’s important we keep the positioning,” he said. “I often give as as example that if I go to a party here in Paris, and there’s 100 people there, right now I might see one person wearing a Tabi shoe, and maybe someone wearing a jacket with the lining hanging out, or a sweater with a hole. You recognize it’s Margiela, right? So I want five people, not two. I don’t want 50, but I want five, because that’s how I will grow in a way that I can still be true to the brand.”
