spacetm: The White Stuff: SpaceTM's Joe explores Maison Martin Margiela

I've always had a rather love/hate relationship with fashion. It started at university when I spent my entire student loan in one afternoon, only to realise white trousers and two-inch soled silver trainers were probably only a good idea if you can stay alive to wear them. And for that you also need to be able to purchase food at regular intervals. Oops.

These days I'm rather more pragmatic. I can coo at a fashion magazine, but I like being comfortable, so I'm happy to leave the flouncier feathers to the peacocks.

That said, I've always had a soft spot for Martin Margiela; the notoriously mysterious Belgium designer who started up his own fashion label – Maison Martin Margiela – in 1988, after working as an assistant to Jean-Paul Gaultier.

He has novel way of doing things. For example, he never gives interviews other than by fax and no one knows what he looks like.* He eschews celebrity and hides the identity of the models he uses with ponytail hairpieces, veils or – in catalogues – by placing black bars over their eyes (a pair of sunglasses from his 2008 spring/summer collection is shaped like such a bar and is named "Incognito"). His products don't come with a flashy logo, but a simple white rectangle, sewn on with four corner stitches (using white thread, natch) onto the inside of the garment.

*Ok, I'm sure his family know what he looks like, you get my drift.

As you may have already guessed, white is one of his favourite colours. "White means the strength of fragility and the fragility of the passage of time," the fashion house is quoted as saying in 2008. When it moves into new spaces – shops and the like – it takes over the furnishings of the previous inhabitants and paints them... you guessed it, white! And I don't mean a pretty, super-sleek, gallery kinda white, but a coarse, heavy handed "I had several bottles of WKD before I started this" white.

It also paints its garments. As as you might expect, over time the paint wears off. "Oh no! shhhhit! What am I gonna do?" Chill out, because this is all part of the Maison Margiela aesthetic. Whereas ageing and decay are generally considered taboo in the fashion industry, Margiela embraces the passing of time along with the associated wear and tear a garment may acquire. As the white paint gradually cracks, new textures and colours become visible. It's resurrection IN DRESS FORM.

I love white (see here for evidence of this) so you can perhaps understand why I dig all this sartorial monochromatic fetishism.

Incidentally, I did once try painting an old pair of trainers white. It actually led to me pulling someone in a bar (they were a Margiela fan), but I didn't account for the fact most footwear is designed to allow your foot to breathe in some way. If you pile on the emulsion, they soon start to stink...