John Galliano in his own words: The designer reflects on an extraordinary decade at Maison Margiela
Maison Margiela, SS21
This was inspired by tango and one of the trips I made back in the day to Argentina. I wanted to experience the real tango. Everywhere they took me it was souvenir tango. Eventually, I remember turning up to a dilapidated house with three or four members of my team with sketchbooks, cameras — very naive. All that was taken away from us. We went up the stairs — with each step another step kind of crumbled away, and when we got to the top, the roof had fallen in and the moon was streaming through and all these wild cats were running around. And lo and behold, there was, like, a 90-year-old gentleman with silver-grey hair and what must have been his hip-hop granddaughter. We finally got to witness the real tango, and in a way, even to this day, I think we were quite blessed not to have taken pictures, because that visual — that memory — sometimes is even richer.
Ivy Getty gets married
This was a very grand moment — Ivy Getty and her bridesmaids. The dress is made up of all broken mirrors that are reassembled a little bit like stained glass. We actually worked with someone who did work in that way, who put stained glass fragments together. It was quite a long process, but when Ivy walked in, she was just ablaze, because all the light just refracted off of her. And we made her a little crown, and again, it looked like broken Coca Cola bottles, but they were all 3D printed; they looked like sandblasted stones from a beach. It actually looked very aggressive and sharp, but it wasn’t. It was a fantastic moment, such fun.
Artisanal, AW21: Anonymity of a lining
Linings are always hidden, but there are beautiful things that go on there. It’s all part of the thing that drives us to deconstruction. I think one of the reasons why both Martin and myself and anyone in the ’80s was deconstructing was to learn how to construct, how to make clothes, because that was our driving force. I think that’s probably where I would have discovered the beauty. So, of course, you want everyone to know that and see that. That was part of that whole deconstruction movement, you know, discovering things that we valued so highly — the petites mains, the work, the stitches, the tailor marks and also learning how to create all that.
Artisanal, AW22
This happened just as we were coming out of the pandemic. There was this feeling that people wanted to be more physical again, but I didn’t want to drop all the stuff I’d learnt through film and digital and live mixing. This was the first attempt at doing a live show but including film work and theatre, which was insanely ambitious. The models had a script, with words to lip sync; they had entrances and exits, musical cues to think of. And often they were acting to just a camera in very intimate and challenging scenes. Then it was mixed and shown simultaneously at the same time above. It was such a fun way of working, and very Margiela I thought — that whole backstaginess.
Maison Margiela, AW23
Each time it’s Count and Hen. For me, they embody Mr and Mrs Margiela. Their characters are always in the collection in some shape or form. There’s even a love child, but we’re yet to find out who the love child is.
Artisanal, SS24: Artisanalogy
The blood that courses through our veins, the DNA, it’s true, it all appears here. In my life, I’ve never seen a show so documented. I don’t know how to describe it, really. I think they said it went viral, because they can measure those things today, can’t they? After the third or the fourth day, people were still talking about it. But then, after weeks and months, they were still talking. The work that Pat [McGrath] had done, and how it had engaged all those kids into trying to do the makeup themselves. Inspiring them to put on trench coats back to front and be proud, and they too could do their look and walk like Leon. It was really something quite, quite moving. It’s why we do it. It’s why we do it.
Zendaya at the 2024 ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ Met Gala
We worked on Kim’s dress simultaneously with the collection. It’s not lace, although it looks like lace; it’s tooled metal. Each piece is dipped in silver and it’s all mounted like you would a cabochon, like high jewellery. Kim is a real trooper, she will stand there for hours while one is working. A real perfectionist. I mean, I thought I was obsessed. She takes it to another level, and she’s so respectful of the partnership involved. And Zendaya, after I fit her in custom Margiela, glided into the ballroom where we were working in a Givenchy couture dress [of Galliano’s own design, circa 1996] and my jaw dropped. The first thing I said was, ‘Where’d you get that from?’ She owned it, it was hers. She wanted to both open the Met and close the Met in JG, respectively, for Margiela and the house of Givenchy. That kind of blew me away. When she got on that red carpet — the shapes, the sensibility, as if Mr Penn was in the room. That was a moment beyond for me.
link
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/fashionshow-571565fc3df78c3fa2278b2a.jpg "Words that Go Together with Fashion")
