Fashion fans are being spoilt right now. Not long after the release of the Raf Simons documentary Dior and I comes The Artist Is Absent, a short documentary that takes a look at the life and work of the notoriously reclusive Belgian designer Martin Margiela. Produced by YOOX Group and directed by Alison Chernick, the film gets a release on April 27.
Margiela has maintained an incredibly low profile throughout his career - refusing to be photographed, remaining backstage at shows and rarely giving interviews. This film sees director Alison Chernick enlist many of fashion's biggest names to discuss his influence, some of them handpicked by Margiela himself. "He actually gave me a list of people to interview that he thought would be good," Chernick told the Cut. "I talked to some of them, I did not get to all of them."
In this short trailer Gaultier describes how Margiela was "not influenced by the physique, but by the spirit. As a creator, as a designer, he is a genius." Margiela is widely considered to be a visionary, an iconoclastic figure who consistently proved himself to be far ahead of his competition. Suzy Menkes argues that his isolation from the fashion world only added to his allure.
"By not showing his identity, I think that Martin Margiela became more exciting, people wondered what he was like – there was a mystery that surrounded him," she says in the trailer. The film premieres this weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival and gets its wider release later this month. Watch the trailer below.
