Showcasing the work of the avant-garde, highly-inventive tailor and fashion’s invisible man, Somerset House is to bring to London the debut of Maison Martin Margiela ‘20’, a new retrospective celebrating twenty years of fashion’s most influential and enigmatic designer. Closely collaborating with the Mode Museum in Antwerp, the show will be specially reconfigured for the Embankment Galleries at Somerset House to give an insight and exploration of the designer’s artistic and conceptual approach to fashion.

A graduate of Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Art, former design assistant to Jean Paul Gaultier and creative director of Hermes, Martin Margiela is an anonymous anomaly. Always retaining an extremely low profile, he would remain backstage and never venture runway-forth at the end of a show to take a bow. However, he has established himself as a household name, with a brand known for its directional and sometimes deconstructionist take on fashion.

Maison Martin Margiela ‘20’ will be open from June-September 2010.