Maison Margiela just dropped a hot haute couture flip phone

Back in the early 00s, fashion embarked on a kind of second space race, as some of the world’s hottest brands fell over themselves to break into the snowballing cellphone industry,

It all started with Prada, which joined forces with LG to drop a slick, sleek little number that modern models (*cough* iPhone *cough*) owe much of their specs to. Soon after, Donatella Versace muscled in on the act with a gilded gold flip style, Kimora Lee Simmons dropped a baby pink, Cam’ron-approved BabyPhat version, and Dior debuted its own quilted cell which sold for $5,000 – a sum I am sure we can all agree is very reasonable!

As the 00s drew to a close, these luxe styles all but fell off a cliff, as Steve Jobs dominated the market with the early iterations of the iPhone. But now, it seems like we could have a resurgence of the fashion phone on our hands, since Maison Margiela just dropped an extremely covetable Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5. 

Designed for people “desiring freshness and unconventionality”, the uber-ergonomic Galaxy Flip folds down into a tiny square and features a glass screen which somehow also folds, so it’s small enough to fit into even the most miniscule of microbags. Design-wise, in Margiela creative director John Galliano’s hands it looks like it could be fresh out of The Matrix universe.

With a see-through glass back, the inside shows the metallic inner-workings of a Margiela jacket, from its seam lines and stitches through panels and fastenings, and demonstrates the kind of tech and skill both brands’ are based on. Naturally, it’s finished with the numerical logo all Margiela pieces bear, and even its operating system taps into Margiela’s Haute Couture cornerstones. 

Though he’s three seasons into his Cinema Inferno era, and exploring the ill-fated romance between star-crossed lovers Count and Hen, Galliano’s last Margiela chapter saw the designer dedicate a series of collections to his ‘digital nomads’, with models wearing phones and iPads strapped to their wrists and ankles, and having screens built into the clothes, so this partnership makes a lot of sense. But then, even if it didn’t, imagine how satisfying it would be to slam the Margiela phone shut after a heated conversation? I rest my case.