The Difficult Art of Turning a Show into an Event or How John Galliano Became John Galliano Again | style

It's not common to see the icy Anna Wintour applauding warmly, nor her boyfriend, director Baz Luhrmann, stomping her feet next to her on the wooden floor. It is also not common for people to shout “Bravo” during the show, and at the end they stand up and applaud the designer for 10 minutes. But the designer…

It's not common to see the icy Anna Wintour applauding warmly, nor her boyfriend, director Baz Luhrmann, stomping her feet next to her on the wooden floor. It is also not common for people to shout “Bravo” during the show, and at the end they stand up and applaud the designer for 10 minutes. But the designer didn't come out to applause (they say he wasn't even there). John Galliano, who dressed up while at Dior to come out and say hello, hasn't been on stage in a decade. The same people who drive Margiela. And he doesn't, because since those famous remarks that cost him his job at Dior in 2011, he has kept a low profile and, in part, followed the path of the founder of the brand he now works for. , Martin Margiela, who for decades has ensured the anonymity that limits patients.

However, her show, which closed Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week on Thursday night, was not only the best on the calendar, it was perhaps one of the most exciting in years. Because if anyone knows how to deal with fashion to deal with emotion, whatever it may be, it's John Galliano. An underground bar under the Alexander III Bridge, with flickering lamps, rickety tables and threadbare sofas. Started by French artist Lucky Love Displays The live singing then gave way to a short film, where, with the aesthetics of film noir, several men fastened their corsets and ran out into the Parisian night, characters who could have stepped out of a Brassaï picture, and who, suddenly, were entering that secret bar, swaying, looking Challenging to the guests, reflecting anxiety, fear or madness in their every move.

In July 2021, when the pandemic was still making physical performances impossible, Galliano introduced his collection with a half-hour video in which the models, who looked like they were taken from a Vermeer painting, faced a natural disaster. Their clothes were torn and dirty, and sometimes served as a barrier against the environment. With this video, the Gibraltar designer began to distance himself from the aesthetic constraints of Margiela, perhaps the most revered brand of the last three decades, in a drift that culminated with Displays This Thursday, a show so designed that words cannot describe it. It was opened by his muse, model Leon Dame, and closed by actress Gwendoline Christie.

And in between, there were all the obsessions that made Galliano the greatest fashion genius of the turn of the century: there was the Weimar Republic, Brutalism, nocturnal Paris between the wars, silent cinema, the striking make-up of Pat McGrath or candidness. References to Vionnet, Lanvin and the golden age of Parisian fashion. There were broken dolls, ghoulish nurses, and night thieves. But above all, there was emotion, drama and discomfort in the clothes that were in the service of a silhouette completely foreign to that used today. Hips, pronounced breasts and tight corsets did not announce a return to the artifice of the nineteenth century, but on the contrary, were at the service of bodies, male and female, outside the canon. Now, after a few years of advocating diversity, the majority of brands have returned to uniform thinness, and it was Galliano who chose difference, disturbing and overwhelming, in his presentation, reminding us that beauty is a concept with multiple meanings, that fashion is in the service of history and not the other way around, and that it was… There was a time when fashion shows were events in themselves, regardless of who was sitting in the front rows. It took more than 10 years for Galliano, who released a documentary this year, to feel comfortable being Galliano again. The same ten years that it took the same audience, accustomed to seeing everything and seeing it very quickly and then forgetting it, to get back on its feet to applaud the show.

Oddly enough, this fashion week began with a show, that of Dior, that focused on the Benjaminite concept of the aura, that is, on that almost indescribable intuition that emanates from works of art and that makes it impossible to reproduce them in the era of mass industrialization. Sewing is perhaps the closest thing to art in this industry, a field based on technique and the idea of ​​composition, and almost always on the absence of function or usefulness from its products. In this sense, Viktor and Rolf fit this definition. The brand, owned by the OTB group (also owner of Margiela), has long based its business model on selling perfumes that are, to some extent, coveted thanks to high fashion shows, which are always close to the artistic process and almost always oblivious to red carpets and other usual dynamics of this the job. This time they chose the Sorbonne University as the venue to present the collection called Scissor hands Which is meticulously reflected in the pieces of cloth, with the black and white semi-finished clothes in a context like this, where the story of detail and precision is everything.

Simone Rocha also used Jean Paul Gaultier's invitation to design her haute couture collection to do something not allowed in her brand, which already has a strong and curious imagination among the public. Blending technical fabrics, Victorian structures, and gothic style with a naive aesthetic, Rocha established a deft dialogue with the French designer's vast legacy with corsets and powder colors as common threads. Among the six creators who have been invited so far a house To reinterpret Gauthier's work, it is perhaps Roscha who understands the challenge best. There were prints tattooNavy Girl and of course Madonna Cones, but not only were they transferred, they passed through the designer filter of one of the most popular ones Gautier This exit; The idea of ​​freedom from the sabotage of oppressive elements. Perhaps the corset that Gaultier designed for Madonna in 1990 is the best example of how to reverse the connotations associated with clothing. Rocha, like Galeano, did just that, speaking, as she said in the show notes, of “roses with thorns,” “skin, nakedness, shapes,” and “friction and softness” in a collection that also included diverse bodies. Through amazing workshop techniques, corsets were transformed into skirts with voluminous hips or jackets with puffy sleeves. She contrasted the almost ethereal nightgowns with rhinestone details, bows and incredibly elaborate embroidery. In short, talking about the body, and even liberating it, depends on precious frames.

It may seem that Kim Jones's collection for Fendi is the opposite of these conceptual games seen in the last days of the fashion shows, but the truth is that its serenity contains several ideas that he defines as “human futurism.” On a white cube stage and with music by Max Richter, the British artist presented a palette of white, black and silver colors, and straight and simple lines. Those kinds of dresses and coats that could be defined as “quite simple” and that subtly evoked the classic fantasy of science fiction. In fact, they are complemented by custom futuristic glasses designed by Delfina Delettrez and various facial scanning devices. The idea, in her case, was to reflect on the current complex relationship between hand and machine, not only to point out that there are gaps, like this, where the machine cannot reach, but also to create an aesthetic by hand. Technologicala future that can only be designed with your own hands because the process is as important as the result.

It is not necessary to use excitement to figure out how to adapt high fashion or try to capture the spirit of the times. Young Robert Won, in his second haute couture collection, is proof of this. He played a lot of visual games, seeking to win the vitality battle going on these days, and the result was so obvious that he couldn't even participate in it. Because for the first time in years, these weeks there haven't been so many empty calls for attention to win Likes On Instagram (beyond the obvious celebrity presence). This Couture Week, almost all brands, each in their own way, focused on knowing how to do what they know, and on using this show for what it is, the most exclusive show in the world. And then There's Galliano, who's gone beyond Instagram.