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Brand: MM6 Maison Margiela x Eastpak
Season: Fall/Winter 2021
Release Date: October 15
Buy: Online at retailers including Hankyu
Editor’s Notes: MM6 Maison Margiela and Eastpak aren’t afraid to — in the words of Missy Elliot — put their “thang down, flip it and reverse it.”
The Maison Margiela imprint and backpack purveyor are about to drop a series of reversible accessories, first unveiled during the sub-label’s FW21 runway in February.
Eastpak’s classic Pak’r backpack is updated with removable shoulder straps, allowing the entire apparatus to turn inside-out, revealing a new colorway.
Pushing the concept even further, the Pak’r is also retooled with shoulder straps on the front and back, rendering our notions of backwards and forwards entirely moot.
One more iteration of the Pak’r is shrunken down into a mini shoulder bag, a playful subversion of the backpack’s intended method of wear.
Rounding out the range, Margiela’s signature Japanese bag — an origami-inspired tote — is also updated in Eastpak canvas and accented with inside-out tags.
MM6’s Eastpak partnership is very much ongoing — at Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2022, the house showed some amusingly meta accessories printed with images of backpacks.
Eastpak, part of VF Corp (facing some shake-ups as of late), is well-versed in the art of high-end fashion collabs.
In 2019, Raf Simons teamed up with the brand to drop as series of tote bags and fanny packs paying homage to London’s punk scene and for the 40th anniversary of the Pak’r, Eastpak recruited six Japanese brands — including AMBUSH and UNDERCOVER — to rework the utilitarian essential.
With Eastpak, MM6 Maison Margiela turns the humble backpack into a conceptual statement piece. As usual, the French fashion house forces us to look at things from a new perspective — albeit a topsy-turvy one.