Some fashion moments age like fine wine, and this is very much one of them. Dazed has revisited its March 2006 issue as part of its Archive Pull series - an ongoing deep dive into three decades of its print history - and the editorial it has surfaced is a genuinely captivating one.
The shoot brought together four artists: Gillian Wearing, Alexis Marguerite Teplin, Goshka Macuga, and Jane and Louise Wilson, all photographed in Maison Martin Margiela. That combination alone tells you something interesting was going on. These weren't models or celebrities - they were creatives in their own right, lending the images a weight and intentionality that feels distinctly of its era.
Why Margiela, why now
Maison Martin Margiela has never really gone out of fashion, but there's a particular energy around the house right now that makes looking back at 2006 feel especially relevant. The archive obsession that has taken hold of fashion in recent years means pieces and campaigns from this period are being rediscovered constantly - by collectors, by stylists, and by a younger generation who only know Margiela by reputation and want to understand the source material.
The Spring/Summer Paris season that year was, by Dazed's own description, not a shy one - even by the usually elevated standards of that city's fashion week. That context matters. Margiela was at a fascinating point in its history, still operating under its founding ethos of anonymity and conceptual rigour, before the major ownership changes that would later reshape the brand.
The Archive Pull series as cultural record
What Dazed is doing with Archive Pull is genuinely valuable. Fashion journalism has a short memory by necessity - there's always something newer demanding attention. But going back to print issues from 20 or 30 years ago offers something that contemporary coverage rarely can: a sense of what it actually felt like to be interested in fashion and culture at a specific moment in time.
Pairing artists rather than models with a house as conceptually driven as Margiela was a deliberate editorial choice that still reads as sophisticated today. It's a reminder that the best fashion shoots have always been about more than clothes - they're about ideas, context, and the people who inhabit them.
If you have any fondness for early 2000s fashion, or you're simply curious about where so much of today's aesthetic conversation has its roots, this 16-image gallery from Dazed's archive is well worth your time.
