What Margiela’s Exit Teaches Us About Creativity in the Age of Overload

On 2018 Belgian Fashion Awards, Margiela was awarded the Jury Prize for ‘his entire career and his obvious impact on the history of fashion, today’s collections, and more than likely the ones to come’ after he had stepped down from fashion 10 years ago. Apparently, he didn’t show up (as expected), but responded with a letter. Below is an excerpt from his letter:

“Many say that fashion has a short memory as it is obsessed by actuality and novelty. But some recent exhibitions about my work exemplified the opposite.”

…

“A beautiful tribute to a period of hard work and dedication starting at early age and lasting for more than 30 years, until 2008 – the very year I felt that I could not cope any more with the worldwide increasing pressure and the overgrowing demands of trade. I also regretted the overdose of information carried by social media, destroying the ‘thrill of wait’ and cancelling every effect of surprise, so fundamental for me.”

He was fashion’s greatest ghost, the designer whose anonymity became his trademark. This letter is a rare whisper from the void that explained his silence, a prescient warning about an ecosystem eroding creativity itself. In a world where collections are leaked, dissected, and dumped online before models even hit the runway, the sacred cycle of creation—anticipation, revelation, impact—is compressed into an endless scroll. The magician’s trick is spoiled before the curtain rises.

Is ‘the thrill of wait’ dead? This isn’t just about catwalks. Creatives across industries feel it. When was the last time you truly waited for something? Think: the poet who feels like a content machine, the painter whose “new series” is demanded before the last one even dries. Creativity today risks becoming an endless output treadmill, where your ideas are served faster than you can dream them. 

Social psychologists point out that anticipation—the “not-yet” moment—is a powerful source of pleasure and motivation. Dopamine fires not when the reward arrives, but when we expect it. Psychologically, we’re wired for delayed gratification. Margiela was pointing to the neurological collapse of suspense in a world that can’t stop refreshing.

Margiela saw the change: surprise, mystery, and creative tension were cancelled under the instant glare of constant exposure. For the creative industry, this constant churn is a form of creativity burnout, demanding endless content at the expense of depth. The mind is not a tap to be left on; it requires fallow periods, gestation, and mystery to produce goodwork. The pressure to be constantly "on" and visible drains the very well it demands we draw from.

Margiela built up a shield that filters out noise and speed, and focused on nuance and soul. Others draw boundaries: Dave Chappelle famously walked away from a $50 million TV deal to preserve his sanity. Author Elena Ferrante shielded her anonymity to protect her words from being chewed by the media cycle. Even Beyoncé has gamed the system—dropping albums unannounced, weaponising surprise as a form of resistance.

In a world that demands instant responses, we struggle between stability and restlessness. Our most important task in this new era is to protect and preserve what we hold dear. Could “willfulness” be another form of “resilience”?

Afterall, as Oscar Wilde once quipped on the power of mistery, "The very essence of romance is uncertainty."