The Aesthetics of the Archive in Contemporary Fashion — Margiela, Raf Simons, Owens, The Row
- May 23, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 30
Five houses, five gestures to inhabit memory.
Clothing no longer merely dresses, it conjures. At Margiela, Raf Simons, Rick Owens, Dries Van Noten and The Row, garments become spaces of memory, part of a broader exploration of the contemporary fashion archive. Not frozen relics, but living materials: spectral, sometimes wounded, always charged.
In these five houses, history doesn’t display itself, it slips in. It folds, distorts, repeats. The garment acts as a haunted surface, where every volume carries the imprint of a before. This approach to the contemporary fashion archive is not about citation, but transformation.
Margiela — Garment as Pierced Relic
At Margiela, clothing is a fragment, an exposed structure, a seam turned inside out. Nothing hides its origin—everything is a trace.
Founded in 1988 by Martin Margiela, the house has always cultivated anonymity as a method. Even today, without a visible creative director, it functions like a phantom atelier. The archive here is raw, tactile, almost wounded. Margiela salvages obsolete elements from the real world: old leather gloves, outdated ties, schoolgirl skirts. He disassembles them, unstitches, reassembles—like the dresses made of vintage scarves (Spring/Summer 1999), or the waistcoats crafted from folded gloves (Artisanal 2006).
There’s no glorification of the past. Margiela doesn’t commemorate: he exhumes, unsettles, revives. His clothes hover between eras, like barely restored textile artifacts. In this incompleteness lies a kind of elegance: the elegance of a gesture that chooses the fragment over the whole, the echo over the declaration.
Faded silhouette, veiled face - the garment as a suspended presence, between appearance and disappea 
A fragile assembly, almost organic - the garment as structure in formation. 
Raw print on a pleated surface - a trace applied without narrative. 
A label slipped into the cut - a fragment of the real held within the garment. 
Threads exposed, seams left open - the garment never fully resolves. 
A distorted shoe, almost unstable - form gives way, material retains memory.
Raf Simons — Garment as Adolescent Manifesto
For Raf Simons, memory is emotional, nervous, saturated with images. The garment becomes a collage of cultural references, visual outcries, adolescent fictions.
Since founding his own label in 1995 and now as co-creative director at Prada, Raf Simons constructs his collections like albums of intimate archives. The “Riot Riot Riot” series (2001), Peter Saville’s printed sweaters (2003), and the ongoing collaboration with artist Sterling Ruby are proof. He prints, on raw materials, the signs of an era: slogans, collages, portraits of adolescents—all torn from the collective memory.
Simons idealizes nothing. He threads connections between past and present, exacerbates tensions. His fashion doesn’t reconstruct, it replays. He cites youth as one might evoke a wound. Each piece is a page torn from a notebook of obsessions: the garment becomes an archive in progress, mobile memory, layered emotion.
Layered bands, constructed rhythm - the garment organises movement. 
Attached fragments, suspended details - a language held in tension. 
A wire-like structure, almost abstract - the body disappears into the drawing. 
Printed image, suspended gesture - the garment as a surface of projection. 
Compressed volume, restrained tension - the silhouette seems to hold an energy within. 
An object grafted onto the body - the garment becomes an interface, almost a tool.
Rick Owens — Garment as Ritual Sculpture
At Rick Owens, the garment is an archaeological form, as if carved from ancient soil. He doesn’t cite, he invokes.
Since 1994, Rick Owens has developed a rigorous, obsessive, almost ceremonial aesthetic. Roman drapes, gothic silhouettes, medieval remnants are present but always diverted. Leather jackets recall armor; long skirts, sacerdotal garments. He repeats his forms like rituals: projected shoulders, erased hips, elongated volumes.
Rick Owens doesn’t speak of the past, he speaks of survival. His clothes seem to escape time, as if emerging from still-smoking ground. The archive is in the folds, in the material, in the way the garment transforms the body into sculpture. A fossil memory, yet still throbbing.
Taut drapery, almost organic - the garment wraps the body like a second skin. Angular structure, closed lines - a silhouette built like armour. Textured surface, worked skin - the garment moves closer to the body. Directed folds, controlled tension - form emerges from movement. Elongated silhouette, almost ascetic - the body moves through space without anchoring itself. Woven motif, repeated gesture - matter becomes a ritual surface.
Dries Van Noten — Garment as Textile Narrative
At Dries Van Noten, memory is visual, sensitive, cosmopolitan. It takes the form of a motif, an embroidery, a print that tells a story.
Since the 1980s, Dries composes his collections like narratives. He draws from textile archives, old catalogs, botanical photographs, forgotten ritual garments. His Fall/Winter 2005 collection, inspired by the Victoria & Albert Museum, or Summer 2018, a tribute to Asian arts, bear witness. He assembles without hierarchy: military pants, silk blouses, coats woven like Afghan rugs.
At Dries, the garment doesn’t document an era, it makes fragments converse. He doesn’t classify memory: he reorganizes it, lets it breathe. The archive here is a generous alphabet, offered without dogma, without drama. An intelligent softness.
Classic tailoring, gently diverted - structure softens without disappearing. Subtle layering, fragile balance - each layer reveals the next. Openwork texture, irregular rhythm - detail becomes movement. Enveloping volume, free gesture - the garment builds itself in the moment. A vibrant, almost liquid surface - light reveals the richness of the motif. Movement settles into the cut - the fabric follows the body rather than constraining it.
The Row — Garment as Inhabited Silence
At The Row, the garment doesn’t cite. It remembers in hollow. It inscribes itself in the line, extends into the gesture, fades into silence.
Founded in 2006 by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, The Row has built an aesthetic of restraint: rigor, balance, erasure. Here, memory absorbs into the cut, into the precision of the drape, into the weight of a barely formulated beige. One senses Carolyn Bessette, Calvin Klein, Geoffrey Beene: but without ever seeing their faces.
This isn’t a work of citation. It’s distilled memory. The garment becomes a smooth yet charged surface. It condenses memories without naming them. Elegance arises from this refusal of effect, from this invisible precision. The Row works the past as one refines a perfume: until only the trace remains.
An invisible construction, carried by movement. 
Space becomes an extension of the garment. 
Material fragments - without ever losing coherence. 
Volume settles into space, with quiet certainty. 
A pure line, a restrained gesture - everything lies in nuance. 
The fabric follows the body without constraint.
An Archive in Five Voices
Returning to the same forms, the same obsessions, isn’t a retreat. In these five houses, repetition is a tool. The past here isn’t narrative, but material. A surface to shape. This approach to the contemporary fashion archive is not about citation, but transformation.
Margiela unpicks the past, renders it visible, raw.
Raf Simons shouts it, pastes it, replays it.
Rick Owens buries it in the body, sublimates it.
Dries Van Noten embroiders it, composes it, welcomes it.
The Row erases it with grace, without ever denying it.
Five gestures. Five ways to inhabit time.
And at the center: the garment, laid down like a palimpsest.
A living page, where every seam leaves a trace.
Credits: Vogue Magazine, The Row, Dries Van Noten, Rick Owens, RAF Simons, Margiela
