03 July,2011 06:53 AM IST | | Colin McDowell
He seemed so safe and protected in his own private Camelot (or was it Graceland?), a special world that he had made for himself, safe in the bosom of a protective mega-company, Christian Dior, within a mega-conglomerate, LVMH. And both smiled benignly as the costs of Dior couture shows spiralled higher, as the setting became as important -- and, often, as expensive -- as the collection itself.
British fashion designer John Galliano is pictured at the end of his Men's
fall-winter 2011-2012 ready-to-wear collection show on January 21, 2011
in Paris. Gallianio is known to appear in costumes as elaborate as those
his models sport, while taking a bow. Galliano is under trial in Paris for
making anti-Semitic comments, for which he was sacked by fashion house
Christian Dior in March. Pic/AFP photo
For years, the scenario went something like this: John wants each model in the show to wear just one dress (the models normally parade in two or three). John needs the models for up to eight hours before the show, for hair, make-up and rehearsals. John wants a unique space for the show and will then decorate it to make his own setting for the clothes. Dior gave John Galliano only the best, regardless of escalating costs, and seemed delighted with the deal.
He was unquestionably worth it, in publicity terms alone. Every season, a John Galliano for Dior couture dress would appear on the front page of every leading newspaper across the globe. Worth millions of dollars in advertising revenue, that dress (sometimes more than one) is what sold Dior tights, lipsticks, eyeliners and all the other covetable things bearing the most famous name in fashion, in their billions. And at prices most women could afford, unlike the couture dress itself, which could cost in excess of ufffd70,000. It seemed a no-brainer. What could go wrong? There was a collective hubris, and nobody seems to have seen it coming, nor the subsequent fallout and damage to both man and label.
Yet trouble had been brewing for some time. The excitement, the joy, the extravagant praise from press and fashion commentators, had all become gradually more muted over the seasons. The creativity was brilliantly, electrically there, but something seemed to be missing. Some of Galliano's friends thought something irretrievable had been lost when his closest creative collaborator, Steven Robinson, died four years ago. Was that the beginning of the change?
I don't think so. John Galliano, the man, is the only begetter of John Galliano, the creative genius, and, although he has intensely creative relationships with the people in his team (in fact, it was almost a gang; there is a Famous Five/Just William element to the small, tightly-knit, narcissistic group), not one of them is essential.
When Galliano split with his muse and collaborator, Amanda Harlech, in 1997 and took up his post at Dior, questions were asked. How can he survive? Who will fill the gap? Well, there was no gap. Robinson, who had been with Galliano since 1988, was already a key player in the team and the pair forged ahead without even a blip.
Many expected that Robinson's early death, at only 38, would throw Galliano completely, and people waited for an aesthetic wobble. It didn't happen. But privately, Galliano felt creatively bereft as, a hundred times a day, he found himself saying: "Ask Steven", "Tell Steven", "Steven knows", before it finally sank in that there was no Steven by his side any more. There was Bill Gaytten, however, a longtime team member whom Galliano has happily admitted is a technical genius, capable of making the most outrageous fantasy into reality -- even a dress made entirely of safety pins.
So, the private world of Camelot shuddered, but did not collapse. Galliano was still the one who, with his originality and untrammelled imagination, could inspire his gang to do the seemingly impossible -- and do it brilliantly. Everything came from his head as he created and peopled his own world: the world of the next collection.
His creativity is based on stories: travellers' tales, unlikely romantic liaisons and exceedingly exotic locations. Each season, he and his team went on a research trip. There have been many, stretching from London (the city that still feeds his imagination more than any other) to China, where he was f ted like a mandarin. Open to any and every stimulus, high and low, they return with a mass of flotsam -- theatre tickets, newspaper clippings, edges torn from posters -- and hours of film, sketches, notes and everything required to produce the new collection.
Galliano tells the story, spinning a world of heroines, beauty and drama. Then the team begins to people and dress it. The DJ Jeremy Healy works on the music. Pat McGrath creates the make-up. Stephen Jones conceives the hats and hair. Galliano is the maestro, the circus master, the Diaghilev who comes up with the ideas, holds everything together and orchestrates every detail. As one member of the team told me after his arrest: "He was our drug. We were all addicted to him. He made everything possible for us. We worked endlessly because we believed in him.
He creates a family when making his collection, his own ideal family, in a world free of lies, deceit and paranoia, a world where only beauty matters -- and we loved to be part of it." If that sounds like a childish fairy tale, maybe that's because it was. Another intimate is more cautious. "He was put under impossible pressure, not only by the demands made by Dior, but also by what he demanded of himself. John is a method designer, like a method actor. He doesn't just design a collection -- he becomes the collection. He role-plays every part of it."
And, as everyone on the inside has known for a long time, Galliano could only do this with the help of red wine. Of his dependence there is no question. That he believed it enabled him to break barriers and make fashion miracles is false -- as much as cocaine did not make Sherlock Holmes capable of defeating Moriarty.
It was a slow descent, as alcoholism usually is. And that raises the first of many questions: with a loving long-term boyfriend (Alexis Roche, 39), an adoring team and a workforce devoted to him, why was nobody looking out for Galliano? How much of what was going on was known to Toledano, or even Arnault? And if it wasn't, why wasn't it? Galliano was the goose laying the golden eggs. Didn't anyone care enough for the future of Dior, and the unique position of couture, that his genius had helped create, to try to help him out?
was Galliano, vulnerable and drunk, possibly upset by some intractable design problem, allowed to wander Paris, alone, done up in a way that would immediately draw attention -- certainly, some of it hostile -- from people who live and dress in a more everyday way? Sinister stories of plots abound, and it will take the trial, that started on Wednesday, to get somewhere near the truth. There are many questions to answer. Are we to believe that colleagues at all levels were too afraid to address the problem?
It has not helped that he has since sacked his French lawyer on allegations of embezzlement (Stephane Zerbib is countersuing), and replaced him with an English one. What of Galliano's friends and his loyal team? Keeping him sober, or getting help to make that happen, was in their interests. Their jobs depended on his genius, and that depended on his mental and physical health.
And what of Dior and the line-up of the atelier staff at the end of the last Galliano show? This was a crude statement to the effect that genius can come and go, but the artisanal skills are what make Paris fashion supreme. Did that mean there would be no more temperamental genius designers for Dior, whose collections are apparently to be conceived by the atelier team, at least for the foreseeable future? Or is it just part of a policy of shaming Galliano, as if he had not already sufficiently shamed himself?
If we pull back from Galliano and Dior, what does this sad, sordid affair mean for Paris fashion, in general, and couture, in particular? The number of couture houses in the French capital is, of course, much bigger than international coverage of couture shows reflects. But most are small establishments, with a dedicated local and, usually, more mature clientele who want endless reruns and line-for-line copies of clothes from the 1950s. Harmless enough, but not worth an expensive trip to Paris.
How long will the interest of women -- whose fashion world is dominated by instantly available and easily wearable clothes in the shops -- in fantasy fashion (which is what couture is) be sustained without the extra frisson of a designer who has been such an extravagant figurehead for so long? How ironic it would be if the fashion house, founded in 1947 by Christian Dior, and generally believed to have saved Paris as a fashion centre, should now be the one to endanger the very survival of couture by sacking the man who can be said to have saved Paris couture for our times; the man who, with tact and understanding, made his own statement without violating the aesthetic of Christian Dior, the designer he revered.
The outlook for Paris is bleak, as it is for Galliano. He has been stripped of his dignity and livelihood, although also, it is to be hoped, his toxic lifestyle. My personal view is that the behaviour filmed in the Paris cafe -- vile as it was -- was a desperate cry for help, whether conscious or not. Help for a 50-year-old man still so frightened and insecure that he could only face the world in disguise, as in his famous, yet increasingly fatuous, walks down the runway at the end of his shows. Without this terrible check, Galliano, the greatest fashion creator of his era, would have become, long before he reached his sixties, a pathetic, painted freak, respected only by people who remembered his great days at Dior.
No matter what the outcome of the trial, Galliano must now step away from his Camelot and start over again. And he can do it, by confronting and conquering all his demons, listening to wiser counsel than in the past, and returning to the real world. As Harlech once said, at another difficult moment in his tumultuous career: "Always remember, John will be the last man standing."
