Maison Margiela Tokyo: 20 Years at 2-8-13
We introduce a new chapter of MaisonMargiela/folders, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of Maison Margiela Tokyo Ebisu at 2-8-13. This folder uncovers and celebrates how the store came to be, and explores the unconventional creativity that defines it. We record the memories of its team members, document what is perhaps our most well-known and loved connection to Japanese culture and dress – our Tabi, interview the Tabi collectors and locals who form our community, and capture the district that has become the arena of our story in Japan. Presented as a ZINE exclusively distributed in select newsstands across Ebisu, we also share the exploration through Dropbox.
In September 2000, 12 years into our house’s history, we opened our first-ever store. Not in Paris, where our offices are, nor in Antwerp or Brussels of Belgium, our founder’s home country - but in a residential suburb of Tokyo called Ebisu. In 2006, the store had to be relocated. We chose a building just a five-minute walk away, at 2-8-13 Ebisu Minami – a former electrical products factory. This chapter offers a detailed account of the history of our first-ever store and its evolution to 2-8-13. The memories of our team members, still with us today, are recorded and a timeline marks the major events of nearly 30 years in Ebisu.
We invited local artist Takehito Moriizumi to create a Manga inspired by the story of our store’s transformation from a former electronics factory into Maison Margiela Tokyo Ebisu. In it, a group of researchers visit an abandoned factory to investigate the strange signals discovered there. They witness a metamorphosis that turns the marks of time into material for the new.
To further celebrate our store, we present a Line 2 installation on view in the store from 5-15 November. Line 2 is our initiative for unexpected creativity through dual partnerships. We invited local artist Mio Suzuki to enter into a creative dialogue with historic French tapestry manufacturers and collectors Les Manufactures Nationales – Sèvres & Mobilier national. 59 antique and contemporary tapestries were selected and shipped to Suzuki, where she spent over three months intricately unravelling and re-weaving the tapestries into an installation, a continuation of our study of tapestry since the 1990s.
Maison Margiela Tokyo was where we first presented our collections to the world. Our team selected 20 signature pieces sold at Maison Margiela Tokyo Ebisu at the store from its opening in 2006 to today.
Perhaps our most well known and enduring connection to Japan is our Tabi. The silhouette first appeared in the opening look of our debut show: Spring Summer 1989. Martin Margiela first noticed the traditional Japanese tabi during a trip to Japan in the 1980s. This chapter explores our Tabi through interviews of our local Tabi community: Tabi collectors - model Kozue Akimoto and artist and designer Noritaka Tatehana - and a local Ebisu cobbler who has been restoring Maison Margiela Tabi for 20 years. A timeline also reveals the many forms our Tabi has taken over the years.
The Ebisu district has become the arena of our story in Japan over the last nearly 30 years. It was the first place in the entire world where we showed our collections and elaborated an unconventional store concept. For this folders, we collected archival documentation of the store, alongside new images. We invited photographer Takashi Homma, local to the area for over 20 years, to photograph the streets and local community.
