Galliano: Journal of a 90s Haute Couture collection | Fashion documentary | HQ

John Galliano was born on November 28, 1960, into a close-knit Roman Catholic family in Gibraltar. His father was a plumber, his mother a spirited homemaker who loved dancing and taught them flamenco. When he was six, the family left the sunshine and souks to settle in East Dulwich, a residential London borough not known for flamboyance. After an unhappy stint being bullied at the local all-boys’ Church of England grammar school, Galliano enrolled in the East City of London College, where his sketching talent was noticed, and while there, was accepted at the prestigious St. Martins. He loved the school, worked hard and flourished, surrounded by creative peers and experimenting with different mediums, including turning his sketches into clothing. To make money, he worked every spare hour as a dresser at the National Theatre. Taylor quotes him evocatively recollecting how he “smoothed with the oil of his own hand” the moleskin top hats worn by the performers. Galliano learned the intricacies of historic dress, how it moved across the stage and how such great actors as Judi Dench and Sir Ralph Richardson “commanded their space.” He augmented his classes by studying 18th-century construction at the V&A. Taylor’s research has revealed that Galliano, ever the perfectionist, would sketch by candlelight on tea-stained paper with a calligraphy pen “for authenticity.” As if all this were not stimulation enough, it occurred against the background of the gender-fluid 1980s New Romantic London club scene, epitomized by the outrageous Leigh Bowery, Lucien Freud muse and MC at the subversive polysexual Taboo Club, who famously decreed, “Dress as though your life depends on it or don’t bother.”

“Not only were his designs a product of extraordinary feats of imagination and insane workmanship, but also Galliano was one of the first to present each collection as spectacle, a theatrical, immersive experience,” Taylor says. The book, too, is immersive, addictively so, presenting in encyclopedic detail and with wit and vim Galliano’s personal and commercial ups and downs. Thus, we learn of his many loyal friends and very few foes (his beleaguered backers for instance): stylist Amanda Grieve (the future Lady Harlech); Vogue editor Hamish Bowles; and Princess Diana, who wore a scandalous bias slip design from his first Dior collection to the 1996 Met Museum gala celebrating the atelier’s 50th anniversary. We read about the models, like the 15-year-old Kate Moss, who made her catwalk debut in a consummate little black “waif” dress from the Spring/Summer 1990 collection, which was panned — “even the art school groupies were yawning,” reported WWD. And we read that in the March 18, 1986, issue of the New York Times, Michael Gross perceptively wrote that “Mr Galliano’s period is that of Robin Hood, but his collection looked like fashion’s future.”
The Incroyables coat bought by Johann Brun, Galliano’s first, much-put-upon and money-losing backer, for around $500 in 1984 sold for nearly $78,000 at Taylor’s June 2019 Passion for Fashion auction — if there was ever an item with provenance, that was it. We learn of such signature Galliano features as poacher pockets, vestigial sleeves, the scissor skirt and bias cuts, as well as accessories like early shoe collaborations with Patrick Cox and Manolo Blahnik. Not to mention his own outfits and hairstyles, white mascara, his music, perfumes and heroines, ranging from Mesdames Recamier and Butterfly to Dorothea Lange. And that’s just in his early days!

More than a decade later, after dozens of collections for his own label and a brief, uninspired foray at GIVENCHY, Galliano “dragged Dior screaming into the 21st century,” as milliner Stephen Jones, a longtime friend and collaborator, succinctly summed it up for fashion authority Colin McDowell. In just eight weeks (during which he drove the 60 skilled staff absolutely crazy), he produced 50 looks for Dior Haute Couture’s brilliant Spring/Summer 1997 Maasai collection, whose chapter in the book leads off with an image of the silk label sewn into the garments. The collection included the Absinthe gown that Nicole Kidman unforgettably wore to the Oscars and Jones’s priceless carved Samba-and-limewood trilbys, which, Taylor says, were “featured in Dior advertisements for many years.

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