Martin Margiela Is Back

The influential designer walked away from fashion in 2009, but he didn’t stop creating. Here’s a first look at his new career.

More than 13 years after leaving fashion behind, Martin Margiela, the elusive and highly influential Belgian designer who changed how we dressed in the 1990s, is back. But not as part of a nostalgia-driven trend wave. As an artist.

On Oct. 20, Mr. Margiela’s debut solo show, which is untitled, opens at Lafayette Anticipations — Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette in Paris. Like the Margiela clothes, which deconstructed notions of the suit and beauty through unconventional materials and approaches, the exhibition creates a sense of wonder around the banal through some 40 sculptures, collages, paintings, installations and films. It is almost as though Mr. Margiela views the world through the lens of a photographic negative, highlighting the details most of us never see and demanding they be reconsidered.

“I became obsessed with fashion very early in my life and developed my own vision by presenting it in the most conceptual way possible,” Mr. Margiela, now 64, wrote in an email. (The designer famously never showed his face or gave an in-person interview during his time in fashion, and he has not changed his approach now.) But, he wrote, “I needed to explore other mediums, to enjoy pure creation without boundaries.”