Matilda Marginal, an eccentric sustainable designer, is set to showcase her latest collection at Denver Fashion Week’s (DFW) Society night tonight.
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Originally from Russia and now based in Denver, Marginal has always had a passion for fashion design and styling out of both curiosity and necessity. She described the thrill of growing up hosting fashion shows with choreography with her parents as the audience and sewing clothes with her mother due to the economic hardships in Russia at the time.
“My mom and I started sewing using fancy German magazines, they would have patterns there and this was very, very edgy fashion for that time,” Marginal said. “She was sewing for herself and for me, and I used to look different from other people, and this is like a drug you know? If you have this attention from a young age, you just become a fashion whore.”
The brand name Marginal stems from different, more negative connotations of the word itself — such as a person on the edge of a social group, a minority, or something that is unimportant or destroyed. The brand turns this definition on its head, emphasizing that these garments are not to be destroyed but to be deconstructed and to find new purpose in the unconventional.
When it comes to the designs created by Marginal, there are absolutely no limits on creativity. Using non-traditional materials like nylon gloves, plastic bags, pantyhose and so much more, Marginal creates garments with unique silhouettes and direct intentions behind them, including an emphasis on sustainable design.
READ: Introducing DFW’s Society Designers
“It’s already the boiling point, and I do believe that we’re doing such a shitty job living on this planet. Our resources are not endless, we have to be mindful, and we have to be sustainable,” Marginal said. “It’s all related. We are the system, this world works like a system, everything is connected. Doing bad to another person makes the world worse. So being bad to nature, you make this planet bad. So you’re making your life worse, too. We have to stop.”
With this sustainable lifestyle in mind, the designer’s creative process varies from collection to collection, piece to piece. Inspiration can come in many forms, including simply seeing a piece of material she’d like to experiment with. As Marginal explained, “the stranger, the better for me.”
Describing her brand as sustainable and Avant Garde, Marginal also explained that every piece or collection always has a bigger meaning behind it — even if the designs only pay a subtle homage to it. This year’s collection was influenced by Marginal’s beliefs on the social construct of marriage, specifically how dehumanizing marriage can be from the female perspective.
“So, I was going through a divorce, and this idea, the institution of marriage, it’s not relevant anymore…Even to think about a wedding dress as a garment, like barbed wire, everything is all wrapped up like you’re a gift to send off. It’s kind of offensive,” Marginal said. “I just think that marriage was never built to make a woman happy. I think people become unhappy when they get married, and maybe that’s only my personal experience because I create based on my experience.”
Marginal has shown once before at DFW Spring 2023. The collection entitled, “Screaming Silence” was filled with white subversive pieces and framed clothing installations which models carried down the runway. The designer also has a storefront in Denver, located at 2820 E. 17th Ave.
Clearly, a designer inspired by the world around her, Marginal is of the modern, anti-fashion type with an alternative yet elegant flair to her pieces. Based on the obscure, contemporary styles that we’ve seen by Marginal thus far, the upcoming collection is one you certainly won’t want to miss.
Learn more about Marginal on her website or Instagram, and get tickets to Society night of DFW on Nov. 16 here.