Maison Margiela Dress-Age Handbag Collection

The Dress-Age

The Dress-Age is the new bag by Maison Margiela. Unveiled as part of the Spring-Summer 2025 Avant-Première Collection, the emblematic silhouette draws on the bourgeois gesture: the Maison’s term for imbuing something with effortless gestures that evoke the movements unconsciously associated with the mid-century fashion mentality of the bourgeoisie. A deconstruction of a familiar word, the name Dress-Age conveys our eternal attraction to the ageless dress codes on which the bag is founded. The versatile styling options enabled by the bag’s gestural construction are illustrated in a campaign photographed by Szilveszter Mako.

The Dress-Age is a trapezoid tote and hobo crafted in the finest pebbled calfskin and adorned with smooth calfskin double handles informed by classic constructions of leather goods. The lining is bonded in camoscio goatskin suede posing as the leather’s natural inner side. The bag’s characteristic expression is created by adjustable long handles set on magnets that allow them to rotate and garland over its triangular edges when the bag is carried in its short handles. They are in turn reinforced using the leatherwork technique of sugherite.

The Dress-Age’s inspiration is steeped in the Artisanalogy of Maison Margiela. Its gestural construction is tied to unconscious glamour, which denotes items or gestures that resonate as glamorous in the collective awareness. The bag’s luxurious suede lining alludes at the notions of reverse swatching – the exchange of wardrobe elements conventionally worn as either top or bottom layers – and inverted snobbery, the practice through which the normally- humble interior of a garment or accessory is elevated through rich materials.

The Dress-Age Tote is proposed in a horizontal dimension in large and small proportions, and in a vertical dimension in a medium proportion. The Dress-Age Hobo adaptation features in small size with short handles only. The super- fine pebbled calfskin bags are rendered in black with chestnut brown handles, toile-like ivory with chestnut handles, and graphite grey with black handles, while the Hobo appears in burgundy with black handles.