All 270 lots were sold and yielded a total take of almost 2 million euros, including a spring 1990 wool suit that commanded 101,400 euros, touted as a new world record for a piece by the designer.

One of its effects was to focus attention on the clothes themselves, created by a team and credited to Maison Martin Margiela, aka MMM. And what intriguing clothes they were: Recall, for instance ...

making it the largest single auction of Margiela ever held. Key pieces hailed from seminal collections such as Maison Martin Margiela’s spring 1990 show, and were estimated to fetch between ...