PARIS - SEPTEMBER 29:  (UK OUT) Models walk the runway during the Maison Martin Margiela show part of Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2009 on September 29,2008 in Paris,France.  (Photo by Karl Prouse/Catwalking/Getty Images)
Cover Models walk the runway during the Maison Martin Margiela show during Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2009 (Photo; Karl Prouse/Catwalking/Getty Images)

The mysterious fashion designer, who bowed out of the fashion world in 2009 to focus on his art, will be making a comeback with an art exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris

Fashion designer Martin Margiela is back––but as an artist rather than a designer. Margiela will soon have his first solo art exhibition, taking place at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris. The avant-garde fashion designer and founder of Maison Margiela bid farewell to the fashion world in 2009 and dedicated himself to making art.

Details of the exhibition remain under wraps but it's set to bring together Margiela's unseen artworks, most of which were made in the Lafayette's workshops with themes like the passage of time, disappearance, chance, mystery and aura.

See also: How Jonathan Anderson Became One Of Fashion’s Top Designers

The Belgian designer has maintained a mysterious status in the fashion world—not giving interviews, with photographs of him rarely taken and even staying backstage during his shows—but despite this, he became one of the most well-known names in the industry. His work since the 1980s metamorphosed fashion, constantly pushing the boundaries of possibility through shows, materials, and forms. Because of this, there's a great amount of anticipation to see the same magic reflected in his artworks.

The gallery said in a statement that Margiela worked "with multiple media to reveal, for the first time in public, an obsession with art that began in his teenage years." And adds that the "show champions the idea that Martin Margiela has always been an artist whose work has been permanently on display both inside and outside the art world."

We can expect the artworks to showcase Margiela's vision in transforming the banal and the trivial into a source of wonderment and surprise. "[The exhibition] also reveals a powerful vision that ceaselessly questions our perspectives on the world and suggests how we might see it in new ways," the gallery adds.

The exhibition is scheduled for April 15–July 25, 2021.

See also: Karl For Ever: The Fashion World’s Standing Ovation For Karl Lagerfeld