Starting with Nick Cave's song from Lawless, "Fire in the Blood/Snake Song," with bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley and Emmylou Harris, a down-home theme was set. Yet the mood of the collection was not strictly bluegrass; it was more blue-collar. Workwear, uniforms, and a take on masculine tailoring were the orders of the day in the first part of the show—and it was the first and last parts of the offering that were the strongest of all. The tailoring at Margiela was reinvigorated here, and the simple decorative touches—oversize cuffs and hand-painted stripes on the seams of suit trousers—were uncomplicated but effective. The oversize element increased as the collection went on, but it was essentially molded to and softened for the feminine shape. The other standout part was the ending of "protest dresses." The word "défilé" could be made out running down the middle of one of them—or was that "defile"? Either way, it worked; there was a definite notion of propaganda here. These dresses brought to mind Jean Paul Gaultier's legendary Constructivist collection with its debt to early Soviet agitprop. And on reflection, that earlier part of the show seemed to have a debt to Gaultier, too, in its nod to the short bomber combined with a particular take on menswear. Lest we forget, Martin Margiela once worked for Mr. Gaultier, and that seemed a romantic seam to mine in terms of connections to the founder. It all added up to something new in terms of the meta-fashion of the house.