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COMME DES GARCONS S/S 2012

Baptized White Drama, by Rei Kawakubo. Strangely beautiful is how Kawakubo’s collections continuously could be best described. Provocation is her incitement, which keeps awarding her for each collection. Each look is, as always, imbued with meaning and representations. Throughout this collection, Kawakubo explored the traditional western garments, with mainly being focused on the wedding dress, the robe de style, a child’s christening gown, caged crinoline, and the back bustle of 1885. She succeeds in subverting its meaning by juxtapositioning these seemingly disparate elements together, oftentimes in one garment. Helping to shape a considerable body of thoughts on the status of women, inside the potent setting of religious ceremonial wear.  

The title introduces the major role played by the leading color of the parade – white - very unusual in the world of the Japanese school, which has always focused on the possibilities and conceptual properties of black. The most magnificent architecture of dresses and skirts reveal their double nature as cages, prisons of the spirit. In this perspective, the improbable and artistic polystyrene hairstyles seem more like complex, deformed brains searching for a way to escape. There were elements of 1960s couture throughout with references to YSL’s Russian doll dresses and the voluminous nature of Balenciaga’s collections at the time.

Although, with the melancholic piano melody gives me medical/asylum energy, which I’m of course all here for. 

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SS 1998

One of Helmut’s most revolutionizing presentations - not because of the collection itself, but for the time and place he presented it. For his spring collection 1998 he moved from Paris to New York, and presented the collection one month ahead of its schedule. After this, other designers followed Helmut (like Calvin Klein) and today New York is first instead of last on the fashion week schedule. Helmut brought a lot of originality to an otherwise sporty New York scene which was the status quo at the time. 

During this time Helmut held such power and influence. You could see his influences everywhere and many people copied collection after collection. If you look at the way he dresses men, it is a very desirable thing and gives off an aura that most men wanted at the time. Helmut addresses the modern simplicity. 

In this collection, Helmut introduced several pieces that would come to be absolutely iconic. Firstly, the ballistic vest. Inspired by the police, being used as a technical garment with a utilitarian touch, Lang transformed this garment into a fashion statement. Instead of it being bulletproof, it was filled with goose down, juxtaposing the harsh signifiers tied to a ballistic vest. Secondly, the OG painter denim jeans. To make ordinary everyday clothes look like luxury, Lang was the first to use paint splatters to change the view on such easy everyday garments. It was known that Helmut Lang denim made more than 50% of the sales for Helmut Lang. So when the Prada group bought up the brand and decided to scrap the denim and replace with perfume, it marked the end of the brand’s financial and creative success. 

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F/W 1994

From Vogue: ”Minimalism, boring? Not in Helmut Lang’s hands. Take the Austrian designer’s fall collection of 1994, the star of which was a sleeveless shift almost elementary in its shape, but in a raspberry pink latex as shiny as candy wrapper imprinted with lace. It’s 20 years later and that simple but decidedly not plain little dress hasn’t aged a day.”

Helmut’s rubber dress got a lot of attention, especially in media. During several months after its release, many shorthand description have appeared in the photo captions of magazines. Its identity is an emanation of impressionistic fashion-magazine copy; ”hard-core glamour with a recklessness not seen since the 70’s”. Lang calling it the ”rubber dress” was a bit of a joke, with him not knowing what to call the garment. The restraint of Lang’s typically minimal approach mutes the sexual implications of the rubber, even as the design is energized by the juxtaposition of materials. The look is characterized more by the femininity of the lace sheath than by the underlying slip of very think latex rubber. After eight years of producing Paris collections, Lang, 38 at the time, had developed a kind of cult following among younger buyers and journalists. He possessed an essential seriousness that made him a leader of what some had begun to call ”counter-couture.”

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FALL 1986

From The New York Times: Fall 1986: "and Helmut Lang of Vienna. Mr. Lang, in particular, personifies the most thoughtful and interesting new direction in Europe, where a new austerity that is neither boring nor only solid black has quietly overtaken ostentation. Mr. Lang's beautifully tailored clothes are simple, unpadded, unadorned and colored predominantly black, gray and navy.”

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DIOR SPRING 2007

Everything in his Dior Spring 2007 collection was inspired by Pinkerton’s affair with Cio-Cio San, Madame Butterfly” - reconfirmed his unique talent to evoke beauty, sensitivity, narrative, and emotion in a fashion show. Kimonos, obis, and geisha makeup were Dior-ified, transformed into delicate translations of New Look peplum suits and full-skirted dance dresses. Every dress had an intense color and character of its own. Some were painted, others sculpted from cruciform furls of woven straw. This was a return to form: a collection that represented a comprehensive ditching of the techno-brashness, crude drag queen posturing, and overdone multi referencing that had come to obscure Galliano’s talent in an increasingly bewildering way. Giant gray House of Dior chairs set on a series of podiums helped rekindle the magic of those delightful nineties shows in which Shalom Harlow and her friends used to method-model their way up and down Galliano’s catwalks. For anyone who first glimpsed Galliano’s raw, romantic genius 20 years ago, or witnessed the impact of his first, all black Japanese collection done on a shoestring a decade ago, today’s presentation recaptured everything that ever made him a force to be reckoned with. Was anything new? No. But when Galliano does what he does this brilliantly, there’s no one who can touch him. 

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SS 2004

Victorian dolls and Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby: Those were the not-so-innocent fancies that caused John Galliano to get into cream puffs and frills for summer. After the puff sleeves and baby dolls, Galliano sent out some of his more familiar nineteenth-century bordello denizens in fuchsia forestry and long Moulin Rouge cutaway flounces. 

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FW 1994

Despite of their brilliance, many British fashion designer’s lack the business skills to make their brand flourish. Galliano was no different, leading to his backers eventually running out of patience and money. In the first ten years of his career he had three different backers and with his Sao Schlumberger show he landed his fourth one through Anna Wintour and André Leon Talley. Because of this financial volatility, Galliano have had many ups and down throughout his career. Does he thrive on those ups and downs? No one knows, but he definitely did his best work when it was going tough. For this collection, he cut all his creation from one bolt of fabric, which was this cheap, synthetic, faux-silk crepe. Then he used a bit of pink satin for touches. He picked up a bunch of used furs at flea markets and recut them. He also got all the models to walk for free. But one could say that the models knew that it would be a return on investment, since they had great faith in John and that he would be successful. This is the collection that marked the bridge between the ruling ”minimalism/purism” of Margiela and Land, and the maximalism-to-come of Galliano and McQueen. 

In fact there actually were two Schlumberger shows. They redid it because they had such a small space - it only held 200 people and they had 400 people that they wanted to invite. Apparently this is one of Anna’s favorite shows. 

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FW 1997

The Return of Cleopatra

Vogue described this collection as ”a spoof on ancient Egypt as seen through the eyes of Hollywood”, and its look as ”Cleopatra meets Sid and Nancy, complete with tromp l´oeil tattoos and a jewel-of-the-Nile dress made entirely out of safety pins.” While some critics were beginning to tire of Galliano’s histrionics - ”By now he has established that at each season he will marry two improbable themes”, asserted critic Amy. M Spindler (probably for The New York Times where she worked). However, these women are Galliano’s alter ego. 

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SS 1995

In an early hint at the astounding sets he’d later create at Christian Dior, he turned our Paris’s Pin-Up Studios with vintage cars, lingerie-strewn clotheslines, and a corrugated metal wall pasted with pornography.

This was an era when models did more than just walk, they truly merchandised the collection and materialized the narrative John birthed. Galliano always gave each and every garment an entire history, he gave the clothing life and character. Before the models would appear on the runway seconds before, he whispered to them only what they were feeling, who they were representing. Kate Moss mentioned that they would always give them a persona to take over. He created a universe in which these garments existed within. From the beginning of getting inspired he would think of the perfume the character wore, her relationship with a loved one, mischief, sex, confidence. The canary yellow ballgown worn by Linda Evangelista came to be an iconic piece from the collection. For a few seconds, Linda acknowledges legendary Franca Sozzani. It goes without saying that Galliano was all about vintage couture. Fabulous Dior gowns and Vionnet bias cut dresses for the sophisticated drag queen. 

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DIOR FALL 2000

Galliano chose to open his Fall 2000 couture show for Dior with a posh wedding, six months after he presented his Hobo-collection. Following the bridal party down the catwalk was a cast of characters that included a French maid with a hickey, a bleeding Marie Antoinette, a sadistic priest, among others. Though, this was no ordinary dress-up game, as the clothes exhibited the exquisite craftsmanship of Dior’s petite mains.

Something learned from the book Dior Runway, was that the show was inspired by Sigmund Freud dream interpretation, meaning that all the characters featured in the show were from the unconscious of the wedding guests. Truly an eye opener for a millennial runway show. According to Jeremy Healy who composed the soundtracks for Galliano’s runways, Steven Spielberg attended this show with the intention of asking John to create costumes for one of his films, but walked out on hearing whip cracks and moans.

The first wedding look, the groom is wearing a green carnation, which in Edwardian times was a covert sign of homosexuality. 

For the soundtrack of the show, Galliano took the music from Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) then mixed into A Clockwork Orange. A pair of young girls was referenced as the creepy twins from the shining, among many other movie illusions. Dark and magical.  Federico Fellini would also be another reference for this show. 

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GIVENCHY FALL 1996

For his second Givenchy couture outing, Galliano returned to the theme he explored in his 1984 collection ”Les Incroyables”. The title refers to a small groups of fashionable and hedonistic members of the French aristocracy who flouted convention during the Directoire period (1795-1799). Known for their affectations, the (male) Incroyables and (female) Merveilleuses’s manner of dress was considered scandalous. The Merverilleuses’s dresses featured empire waists (inspired by classical culture) and were often cut in see-through materials. In Galliano’s 1997 reinterpretations, they read an extensions of slip and lingerie dressing. Vogue was thrilled over the designer’s ”Neglige frills for Givenchy”. Galliano, the magazine noted, ”is now living his Empire dream, of Josephine hair and absinthe-drinker’s eyes.” Emma, the movie based on the Jane Austen novel and starring Gwyneth Paltrow, was not released until after this show, but it made the collection all the more appealing. In it’s romantic historicism it was very Galliano, and not very Givenchy at all. This was the second, and final, couture collection the designer made for the house before replacing Gianfranco Ferré at Christian Dior. 

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GIVENCHY SPRING 1996

John was appointed by Givenchy in 1995. Galliano distanced himself literally and figuratively from Hubert de Givenchy. This show was definitely more together than the couture presentation; better fitting and more thoroughly carried through, yet still pure Galliano in its imaginative historicism. For unexplained reasons the show opened with a The Princess and the Pea-like scenario. The first downs evoke Franz-Xaver Winterhalter’s 1855 portrait, The Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Ladies-in-Waiting, a seeming reference to Charles Frederick Worth, the Paris based couturier. Tuxedo clad Helmut Newton heroines followed, then flappers, styles from the 1940’s and 1950’s. Conjuring a Roman holiday were the finale dresses, made of red sari silk women through with gold with a cartoonish Cleopatral/Cinecittà vibe. The collection was unmistakably a Galliano production, but there were subtle Givenchy-isms throughout in the bows and neat suits. The tagged tops were a distant echo of the Bettina blouse, and Carla Bruni in a draped black column dress was a credible latter-day Holly Golightly. Reactions to Galliano’s couture debut were mixed. 

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SS 1994

A spectacular romance of John Galliano. The leitmotif of the 1994 collection was the story of the Russian Princess Lucretia, who managed to escape from the Royal Palace and break free in search of herself. One snowy evening, she departs, sprinting through the forest in her hooped cage crinoline, her diamonds are hidden in her bustier and only her ermine muffs to keep her warm. Howling wolves are chasing her and the yards of will and taffeta that trail behind her are no match for the prickly terrain, nevertheless she reaches her lover’s humble abode in one piece, with only a moment to spare before she kisses him goodbye and borrows his piped pajamas and boyish tailoring to create a disguise. The main character of the show was a young Kate Moss, who remained loyal to her genius even during the scandal with the Dior house, and asked Galliano to make a wedding dress for her. The lucky few who were invited, had gotten sent a tea-stained, handwritten scroll. 

It was a fairy-tale inspired in part by a Vanity Fair article on remain of the Romanovs and the lost Princess Anastasia, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Jane Campion’s The Piano, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Madeleine Vionnet’s 1920’s bias cut. In true Galliano tradition, a narrative was firmly in place from the beginning to the middle to the end. In a sea of laissez-faire and Margiela-esque deconstruction, Galliano returned to old-world skill and technique to create a moment of pulsatingly original, objective beauty and heartfelt sincerity. To make the crinolines appear more modern, there was a generous dose of transparency in the form of wispy chiffon tops. The song ”Wild and Distant Shore” from the film The Piano, combined with the sound of trebled drummers was chosen for the presentation. Of course, Jeremy Healy operated the music, as usual. 

Prior to this show, Galliano was forced to skip a season due to financial reasons, and after it, he lost his backer and his studio space. Anna Wintour and Leon Talley, who were very much impressed by Galliano’s efforts, introduced him to investors.

The show had an incredible impact and support came in the extensive editorial coverage devoted to Galliano in the March 1994 issue. Two major spreads by Grace Coddington and photographed by Ellen von Unwerth and Steven Meisel showcased the best of Princess Lucretia. 

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SS 1993

This collection is, by many, considered one of the best Galliano shows ever. It’s wonderful to see John inspired by the life in France after the French revolution, influenced by the Enlightenment and the wardrobe from the first half of the 19th century. This is truly John’s territory. One of John’s great strengths is his ability to be consequent with his work, without it becoming dull in any way. Perhaps overwhelming if anything. The model’s were apparently outfitted ”as shipwrecked marauders in worn frock coats, as fainting consumptives in bias-cut chiffon, and as down-on-their-luck aristocrats in extravagantly puff-sleeved gowns.” The models walked messily and didn’t notice if their breast hanged out. I think it adds to the fashion illusion so much better when they just go with it and act like its a part of the look, instead of referencing the mishap and fixing it on the runway.

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LES INCROYABLES - 1984

Galliano’s debut collection has become part of fashion folklore. It earned him a First Class Honors Degree from St. Martins. Impoverished of funds, but rich in ideas, the designer referenced a distant French past, to create a thrilling, fearless, fantastically-madcap vision - in which those who dared could dress up the here and now. As the audience gasped, cheered and hollered, a mix of model-proper, friends, cohorts and club kids - who just somehow looked right - swung down the catwalk to the spliced up sounds of then fledging DJ Jeremy Healy. Something very special was happening here, that much was clear, something that would be pass into fashion legend.

The incredibles, which the name translates to in English, was what Galliano thought of these characters that stood up and defied the situation around them. I wanted my clothes to speak and to capture a moment as incredible as theirs. The collection wasn’t a big budget affair. He used anything he could get his hands on - furnishing fabrics in parts, as not only did that fit the character, it was cheaper. Jackets were worn upside down and inside out, romantic organdy shirts were accessorized with anything from magnifying glasses - smashed and worn as jewelry. You can also trace the influences of the Japanese avant-garde artists and deliberate grotesque in that collection. All those elements such as volumetric details elevated the femininity into a cult. With his first collection, he reminded the fashion world that historical archives are a huge and unexplored layer, in which new ideas can endlessly be drawn. Many designers noted Galliano’s talent as a cutter, he was able to correctly combine asymmetry and elegance. 

Even if the presentation didn’t have a big budget, every look had to have the right face to go with it. There was Camilla Nickerson (now legendary stylist), Paul Frecker (stylist-turned-19th century photographer dealer), Barry Kamen (model and artist). These were people that understood Galliano and understood the spirit of change. The collection ended up being a huge success. Browns wanted to take the collection into their stores straight away.

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JOHN GALLIANO

Galliano arrived in Paris in 1990, a nearly destitute punk with unmistakable talent and an unrivaled reputation for personal excess. At the time, many designers were operating under the influence of Japanese-inspired minimalism á la Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto. The eighties were over and the era of the pouffe was out of vogue. The models, often walking wearing subtly tailored black clothing, would walk quietly down the runway under dim lights. Galliano was appalled by this. He thinks about fashion the was Spielberg thinks about movies: he believes in spectacle, complication, suspense. Suzy Menkes commented his fall 2002 show, calling it ”the most staggering example of self-indulgent luxury since Louis XIV held court at Versailles”, where Galliano also had presented said collection. Critics often dismissed Galliano as a sort of dressmaking Barnum - and his clothes were exquisite, but he was too much of a showman - and his outfits often seemed more suited to the pageantry of public relations than to profits. 

The man is controversial to say the least, but non the less a genius. Crazy genius one might say. Each collection of his 1990’s presentations was based on a fantastical narrative. For example, the Suzy Sphinx show, show a punk schoolgirl who dreamt of cinema and ancient Egypt was taken from her English girl’s school through Egypt to Hollywood where she starred as Cleopatra in a film, seated on a golden throne wearing a dress made entirely of golden safety pins (AW1997). Galliano’s historical research ranges far and wide. For him it’s a dialogue between past and present. While the starting point is factual, the imagination is let loose to run wild. His presentations were highly theatrical and characterized by highly developed sense of theatre. In 1984, his graduate collection from St. Martin’s, Les incroyables, was heavily influenced by a contemporary production of Danton at the National Theatre in London where John worked as a dresser. The immersion of theatricality might also have been informed by Galliano’s immersion in the London club scene of the early to mid-1980s, in which the relentless reinvention of the self through costume and makeup was the currency which guaranteed entry to the clubs. 

A common narrative in his works is to collage together motif from different cultures, juxtaposing them against each other. While at other times he morph references and motifs from different periods and cultures into a single fusion. John is particularly drawn to Edwardian actresses, demimondaines and women of independent means, all of whom were identifiable by the striking, outré or ””exotic”” appearances. Flamboyant women of wealth, such as Nancy Cunard and Marchesa Casati. Also bohemians such as Misia Sert, Kiki de Montpernasse, Gaby Deslys, and the great courtesan Liane de Pougy. These real women were mixed with references from popular culture of the past. It is difficult to imagine a Galliano design which is not a visual quotation form a pre-existent source. 

Givenchy appointed Galliano in 1995, to people’s surprise (including the sixty-eight-year-old Givenchy himself which learned about it when reading a press release. Galliano became the first British designer to take over a major French fashion house in nearly a century and a half - since Charles Frederick Worth was appointed by Napoleon III to dress Èmpress Eugénie. He did a great job at the house, but people were not ready for him yet, with his profile being highly controversial for the role. 

After John got hired at Dior, we was able to create his shows on a much grander scale. Increasingly he began to use more theatrical techniques for this presentations, replacing runway light with theatre lighting and minutely choreographing each section of the show three days before premiere. The conventional parade down a catwalk was replaced by a walk through series of connecting rooms dressed like film sets through which the story was told. Sometimes it almost looked like a salon presentation. Only a very small number of people experienced the old-fashioned intimacy of a Galliano show, seated close enough to see the fine detailing of the model’s clothes, like the original Dior customers in the 1940’s and 1950’s. An haute couture collection which would not appear in the shops, would almost certainly inly be experienced through images. In that way the consumer continually strive for the idea of Galliano, since it’s for very few people could be a materialized reality.

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F/W 2019

Hypnosis

A hypnotic show, indeed. In Van Herpen’s designs, she searches for symbiotic relationships, exploring the hidden beauty at the intersection of precision and chaos. Biomimicry design, but looking at the forces behind what is shaping nature rather than nature itself. This reminds me a lot of Hussein Chalayan’s Spring 2000 show, in which he visits a similar theme. 

For this collection, the designer found inspiration in the hypnotic manifolds within our ecologies, through the work of American artist, Anthony Howe. The three dimensional cyclical harmony of Howe’s kinetic sculptures is the wind beneath the wings of this collection. Howe’s spherical Omniverse sculpture explores our relationship with nature and intertwines with infinite expansion and contraction, expressing a universal life cycle. The meditative movements of the Omniverse serves as a portal for the collection and the models, encircling a state of hypnosis. The collaboration with Howe evolves in an ecstasy of attentiveness, through the symbiosis of all the elements of nature that are dependent on each other. As one of the key pieces of the collection, the finale Infinity Dress, comes alive on the breath of a finely balanced mechanism. Hypnosis reflects the beauty and complexity of our environment, exploring the patterns and structures within its fragile landscapes. In Iris’s own words, the Hypnosis collection is a hypnotic visualization of nature’s tapestry, the symbiotic cycles of our biosphere that interweave the air, land, and oceans.