In today’s crowded fashion landscape, designers at leading luxury fashion houses have to wear many different hats. They need to set trends and ignite fresh ideas on the catwalk, appeal to the demands of their spending couture clientele, create and sell products on a more mainstream level. All the while, they have to also stay relevant by dressing celebrities for the red carpets, crafting relationships with buzzy brand ambassadors, and conceptualizing pop culture-shaking campaigns that make fashion-as-entertainment. It’s a tall order, though there’s a set few that have consistently bucked the trend. Some labels, like Maison Margiela, have succeeded by simply marching to the beat of their own drum.
Since founding his namesake brand in 1988, Martin Margiela was notoriously press shy and very much anti-celebrity dressing, having once said, “We have nothing at all against celebrity, but just not for us! To each his own.” Despite the enduringly low-profile spirit of the brand—and Margiela’s exit in 2009—the intrigue and interest around Margiela designs have persisted—even as successors like John Galliano and, now, Glenn Martens, have taken over the creative reigns.
Then, just this week, a new fall 2025 campaign was released starring Miley Cyrus—its first-ever campaign featuring a celebrity at the forefront, shot by Paolo Roversi. Cyrus has long incorporated the brand into her wardrobe, on album promo circuits, to the Vanity Fair Oscars after-party, and at the Grammys.
“The American artist is captured in a new light, stripped-back and immersed in the core codes and archetypal expressions of the maison,” said the house in a press statement. “Some images portray the artist in a state of undress, her body painted white in homage to the maison’s white-overpaint bianchetto technique introduced in 1989.”