Maison Margiela Expands Retail Footprint, Opens Renovated Milan Flagship
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MILAN — Maison Margiela continues to steadily grow, but Renzo Rosso, founder of parent company OTB, likes to think of the brand as a “niche and increasingly exclusive brand.”
Checking out the newly revamped Maison Margiela boutique in Milan’s Via Sant’Andrea, which opened on Thursday after eight months of renovations, Rosso touted creative director John Galliano’s “unique genius.”
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“We have the product, the designer, the credibility — this is a dream to have,” said Rosso, noting that customers are willing to wait for three months for a Maison Margiela product.
“We meet every month, John is excited to show me the products and it’s always a learning experience, like going to university talking to him,” said Rosso with a smile.
The group in fall 2019 renewed Galliano’s employment pact for Maison Margiela. He was appointed to the top creative role in 2014.
In February, OTB reported that Maison Margiela’s sales rose 25 percent in all geographies and all channels last year, with sales of the brand soaring 107 percent in the 2019 to 2021 period.
Rosso pointed to Maison Margiela revenues of almost 400 million euros.
“The brand is living a positive moment,” said chief executive officer Gianfranco Gianangeli, who joined the Paris-based brand in September 2020. “We are on target to achieve what was planned.”
Despite the pandemic, Maison Margiela opened 33 stores over the past two years. Several of those units opened in China but also in Japan, South Korea, the Middle East, Europe and in the U.S.
The brand’s retail network by the end of 2022 will comprise 85 permanent stores. By the end of 2023, retail will account for more than two-thirds of the business. This compares with around 40 percent two years ago, which is on track with plans mapped out back then. New openings are expected in Dallas, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Gianangeli, who underscored the “strong identity and values of the brand, that has never been ruined” through the years, said China is the fastest-growing market, and South Korea is also performing well, with recent openings, and where the company is starting to manage the distribution directly.
Expansion in China has not stopped, notwithstanding the pandemic. Gianangeli said the company now has 17 stores in Greater China, most of which opened in the past two years and represent about half of the overall stores that opened worldwide. “This of course represents a substantial growth, in terms of volume as well as prestige. In China, we are established as an innovative luxury brand, which is underlined further by the elevated new store concept.”
Maison Margiela’s largest store is located at JC Plaza in Shanghai, spanning over two floors with an area dedicated to VIC and an experiential space.
“We are also fortunate to have found and nurtured a highly talented team who understand the maison. They are ambassadors and can knowledgeably and passionately engage the local clientele,” explained the executive. “This is particularly important in the current situation where travel to China is still not feasible without quarantine.”
The pandemic, he continued, compelled the house “to focus on local clients with brick and mortar stores. This is complemented by our new website, which offers a spectrum of omnichannel services globally. The Sant’Andrea refurbishment represents an engagement of local clientele. Sant’Andrea — compared with the adjacent Via Montenapoleone — is a more local street for residents of Milan. And residents of Milan have become quite international and diverse recently.”
The Sant’Andrea store follows the Anne Holtrop blueprint, which first debuted with the Bruton Street store in London, followed by Avenue Montaigne in Paris, then Osaka and Shanghai.
The starting point for all new stores is the visual language established at the house by Galliano, observed Gianangeli. “For example, the codes of appropriating the inappropriate, décortiqué and memory of…are paired with heritage elements in a monochromatic warm-white space, providing a pure frame to highlight garments and accessories. The architecture creates a space that is reflective of the incredible craftsmanship of the collections.”
The Sant’Andrea boutique, spanning over two floors and 3,240 square feet, used to carry womenswear only, but is now an all-gender store with coed ready-to-wear collections, accessories, shoes, small leather goods, jewelry and fragrances.
“John was a pioneer, he was the first to believe in [genderless designs]. We are lucky he is so advanced,” Rosso enthused.
“Bags are our fastest-growing category,” Gianangeli said. “Ready-to-wear remains one of our business pillars and we see a fairly even-spread balance, with one-third ready-to-wear, one-third bags and small leather goods and one-third footwear.”
There are three Maison Margiela stores in Italy, of which two in Milan and one in Rome.
The store is reopening as Milan is enjoying an especially brisk moment of activities, as a flurry of luxury hotels, clubs and stores are opening in the city.
“Milan is like my house now — actually, I just bought an apartment here,” confided Rosso. OTB, which also comprises the Diesel, Jil Sander, Marni and Viktor & Rolf brands, the Staff International and Brave Kid companies, and a minority stake in Amiri, has six stores in central Milan, in addition to its headquarters.
As reported, new OTB headquarters in the buzzy Porta Romana area will be completed by the end of 2024 or early 2025 in an expansive real estate complex covering round 216,000 square feet.
The existing Maison Margiela store in Via della Spiga will remain open as the location is “off-beat, in line with the brand ethos and heritage. Via Spiga will be for a younger client, more of a ‘destination’ shop that will maintain the original concept and its garden,” Gianangeli said. “We continue to be committed to destination stores, just not exclusively. We embrace juxtapositions and so does our clientele. At Spiga, we plan to pre-launch capsules or Recicla limited editions. This complements the elevated, elegant and luxurious store on Sant’Andrea that carries a full offering of the collections.”
The Recicla label products, listing their provenance and period, are items either secondhand and restored or made from upcycled materials selected by Galliano, and redesigned into limited-edition pieces.
In addition to “little touches depending on the country and the city, to be more locally connected,” said Rosso, stores have site-specific products such as the Maison Margiela x Reebok “TZ Pump Deadstock” pre-launching on Via Sant’ Andrea.
At the time of the opening, the store will carry the Avant-Premiere fall 2022 collection and the Icons collection, “the most elevated part of our offering and we have seen strong interest from the local Milanese clients.”
Inside the store, shelves, display tables and seats are carved in stained travertine, the natural indentations filled with color-contrasting epoxy resin in optical white.
The ceilings and walls of fitting rooms are coated in many layers of hand-brushed painted dark green shimmering gloss, reflected in the Japanese lacquer cabinets.
Galliano reintroduced the Bag Slide in the store, surrounded by the signature Maison Margiela Tabi split-toe shoes and ankle boots.
The Icons segment of the brand continue to grow and Rosso underscored that these products “stay for life,” contributing to the status of the brand.
The timelessness of the designs is also in line with the goal of his group to reduce its environmental footprint under the sustainability strategy “Be Responsible. Be Brave,” as reported.
Rosso said the group is cutting chemical dyes, employing more certified fabrics, and improving traceability. OTB last spring introduced new measures starting in Europe to boost energy efficiency in its stores and offices around the world, which will generate an estimated annual saving of 4.6 million kWh, equivalent to the average annual consumption of about 1,470 households or the CO2 absorbed by 140,000 trees. OTB is targeting 100 percent renewable energy use in its direct operations by 2025, and Rosso believes that in around six months it will cover 55 percent of its electricity requirement for internal operations from renewable, partly self-generated sources.
“It’s not easy, but we want to do more and be increasingly more sustainable,” Rosso said.
In July 2022, Maison Margiela completely restyled its online store, joining the omnichannel Moon platform and Gianangeli said that “while sales on the new website are strong and currently trending way above last year,” he noted that the company has made investments “beyond the merely transactional.”
Galliano and Nick Knight, who consulted on the site, were “instantly aligned that e-commerce is the most exciting, creative area in fashion right now. It’s where the designer and the customer can be interconnected directly thought a visual language and shared values, and it merits the highest aesthetic. Alongside design studio International Magic, we built a unique digital flagship, a window to what the maison offers.”
With the idea of showing clothes in movement, “the purpose of the new site is to amplify awareness, to inspire and to create desire. A purchase or the conversion can happen within the site or offline in a retail store. In fact, there is a visual link between the curvilinear, tactile architecture of the retail stores, which inspired the imperfect, subtly uneven frames into which the images on the website are set. This creates a sense of the human touch, as well as it underlines the omnichannel reality of today. Maison Margiela has and continues to be driven by instinct and a willingness to cut through the noise and connect with those who have a shared mindset,” Gianangeli observed.
