John Galliano has his feet under the table at Maison Margiela now. He's relaxed and doing some of the things he does best, from the giant tiger-stripe, emerald green glitter platform boots up. Galliano always was a dedicated enthusiast of the high sole and stacked heel at Christian Dior, and stuck to them even when they weren’t in fashion, but now they are, with a vengeance. It feels he’s back, and mixing things up like the master of eccentric eclecticism he is.
The press release emailed after the show called it “raw-core,” or “beauty and brutality . . . surrealism and realism” (Galliano doesn’t personally discuss collections with journalists, in keeping with the policy of invisibility Martin Margiela maintained). In practice, he hybridized khaki military coats and jackets with black chiffon negligee flounces, inserted fragments of aprons, tied waists with wide belts, fastened with Western or rococo buckles. Skinny sweaters were “fractured,” with stripes on one side and a solid color on the other; sleeves were plunged into furry armlets or hands into gauntlet gloves.
On the broader fashion perspective, the nonsensical mixed-up nature of this collection might be linked to Miuccia Prada’s layered “vagabond” show or even Alessandro Michele’s method of fusing imagery from different centuries and decades at Gucci. It also gave a glimpse of something different within John Galliano’s repertoire: the attenuated bias-cut dress, which manifested here as slither of silver sheathed in an almost ghostly emerald green Japanese chiffon under a long, matching hooded cloak. It’s a look that is certain to win roles in many a Fall photo shoot spun around the Old Hollywood theme. Timing is everything in fashion, as it is in acting, and this one deserves an encore.
