Martin Margiela was born on 9 April 1957 in Genk, in the Belgian province of Limburg. As a child he was captivated by a television programme about André Courrèges and Paco Rabanne, and as a teenager he put together his own looks from flea-market clothes, an early sign of his lifelong interest in the life of used garments. He studied fashion at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, graduating in 1979, a year ahead of the group that became known as the Antwerp Six.
After five years of freelance work he moved to Paris in 1984 to assist Jean Paul Gaultier, staying until 1987. In 1988 he founded Maison Martin Margiela with the Brussels retailer Jenny Meirens, who called him the most talented young designer she had ever seen. His first show, for spring 1990, was held in 1989 on a derelict children's playground in a North African neighbourhood on the edge of Paris. Children from the area drew the invitations and sat in the front row. Against the power shoulders and opulence of the time, it offered frayed hems, exposed seams, ripped sleeves and split-toe Tabi boots, and it has become one of the most discussed debuts in fashion history.
Over the next two decades Margiela built a vocabulary that permanently changed how designers think about clothes. He exposed construction, enlarged garments to oversized proportions, remade vintage and found objects into new pieces under the Artisanal label, and turned linings, labels and shoulder pads into subjects in their own right. His house label, a blank piece of white cloth or a strip printed with the numbers 0 to 23 and attached by four white stitches, became an emblem of anonymity. He never took a bow, refused face-to-face interviews and photographs, and answered press questions by fax and later email in the name of the house, insisting that the work was the product of a team and should speak for itself.
In 1997 Hermès appointed him creative director of women's ready-to-wear, a choice that surprised the industry. Over six years he made understated, exceptionally well-made collections inspired by the sports and leisure clothes of the 1920s, with loose masculine tailoring, double-faced cashmere and black crêpe evening wear, and pieces such as the losange scarf and the double-tour watch strap. He stepped down in 2003 and was succeeded by his former employer, Gaultier.
OTB Group acquired his company in 2002. By 2008 Margiela was no longer involved in the collections, and in December 2009 his departure was formally confirmed. The studio designed anonymously until John Galliano was appointed creative director in 2014.
Since leaving fashion he has worked as an artist. In 2021 Lafayette Anticipations in Paris presented his first solo exhibition, more than 40 works made over two years, including silicone spheres covered in hair, paintings of dust and deliberately incomplete spaces. Reiner Holzemer's 2019 documentary, Martin Margiela: In His Own Words, showed only his hands. His art career continues to grow. In 2026 he staged his first major solo show in Japan, at Kudan House in Tokyo in April, with a concurrent presentation in Kyoto and a further exhibition with rin art association in Takasaki and Maebashi from September, alongside the Maebashi Biennale. He has also shown with Konrad Fischer Galerie in Berlin.