When speaking about fetish objects in fashion, the immediate example that leaps to mind is the cult of the 'It Bag', cultivated throughout the 1990s, specifically by Tom Ford at Gucci and the explosion of the Fendi 'Baguette' in 1998. It continues unabated - this decade has been about multiple must-haves for each season, but this is perhaps the first example from the esteemed house of Belgian Deconstructionist Martin Margiela, who has chosen rather than creating an it-bag, to create an it box. It is a Margiela tie-box, taken from their own shop stock and lined in white nappa leather to render it an object of luxury - indeed, for many, an object of desire.

This is a supreme example of designer double-speak - a box as bag, packaging with which to package your own belongings. In essence, they're selling you an empty box, and the wink-wink nudge-nudge irony implicit in that will hopefully be understood by Margiela's astute, intellectual clientele. The humour under Margiela's work - both the man himself, and the team that has proceeded him - is often lost in the intellectual cant thrown around the house. There is certainly a wicked sense of humour in this bag.

Margiela shies away from obvious branding in any of its products, choosing instead to affix a blank white label with four visible stitches to its garments. Here that label is affixed to the white leather interior of the box, and the Margiela name is printed in relief on the exterior - it is branded, but it is white on white branding. That is important, because box as bag also links in with the idea of fetishisation of a designer name, and a designer name alone. Margiela's engagement with the concept of overt branding has always been difficult. The removal of the name from their label signifies the house's reluctance to pander to the idea of a designer and a designer as status symbol - Margiela is always spoken of as a 'house' rather than as an individual designer, and in the same vein, although Martin Margiela no longer heads the label bearing his name, the team there are insistent that that bears no relation to the clothes now produced. This box is a comment on the contemporary desirability of a designer name alone - it doesn't matter what the name is affixed to. On ebay.com you can buy designer carrier-bags and designer clothes-hangers: they are being traded as commodities. In a sense, this is an exaggeration of that, pushing it to an illogical extreme. Margiela has reinvented its own external branding as a distinct item of luxury.

Despite intellectual pretensions, at its essence fashion is all about surface. This box-as-bag takes the external, and literally removes the contents. It's packaging with no product:  the packaging itself becomes the product. It's a supreme example of superficiality - but that was the intellectual intention in creating it.