“
Do you think that’s what those who saw the first Galliano shows thirty years ago felt?
», asks a colleague with tears in her eyes after the applause, the shouts and the sound of feet tapping on the floor have stopped.
John Galliano hasn't come out to greet the public for a long time, but he must have felt from the backstage that this Margiela Artisanal show that he took twelve months with his teams to prepare, touched the hearts of the 250 privileged people gathered in a sort of abandoned bistro from the Belle Époque, reconstituted under the Pont Alexandre III.
In this strange setting of wooden table, billiard table and torn garlands where the scent of absinthe from a bygone era almost seems to float, the elite of fashion, those who have shaped this industry over the last quarter of a century, rub shoulders with the “icons” of the time in the people of Kim Kardashian, Kylie and Kris Jenner.
After an hour of waiting, the performer Lucky Love comes to sing and then on the screens in the room, a curious short film in black and white is shown, where it is about Paris at night, corsets, thieves, rainy docks.
In reality, the last images are filmed simultaneously and the young hero, bare-chested and restrained in a corset, enters the room - his waist is so incredibly thin that it recalls that of the legendary Polaire that Toulouse-Lautrec sketched on scene.
This boy is called Leon Dame, a well-known model on the men's fashion catwalks but also one of John Galliano's muses, from whom he took on the attitude of a lascivious, swaying dandy.
Like him, the following boys and girls have their faces coated with silicone transforming their features, like porcelain dolls from the future.
And suddenly, what was a parade becomes a moment out of time where the spectator is projected into the imagination and the universe of the Briton.
The workshops took a year to develop new haute couture recycling techniques.
Giovanni Giannoni
This meeting between the grammar of Galliano and the heritage of Martin Margiela, the first to have elevated recycling (which was not yet called “upcycling”) to the rank of haute couture, is simply virtuoso.
Multiplying references to “fin de siècle” artists from Kees Van Dongen to Brassaï, the silhouettes are sculpted by corsets, hangers and body-modifying prostheses.
The techniques used are incredibly sophisticated, such as “milletrage” for coats, jackets and pants created from layers of airy fabrics finished with tweeds or rustic wools in trompe-l'oeil, then watercolored with veil of tulle printed as “
discolored by the moon, stained by tobacco or oil
”.
The dresses are indescribable with their godets, rosettes and ruches, their lace inlays.
The tweed skirt suits are made using a new in-house technique called shrinking, which partially shrinks a garment “
to generate anatomical expressions
”.
A peacoat pulled over the head in the rain, a jacket lapel raised to cover the face, pants rolled up to avoid a puddle.
So many gestures which shape the attitude of the models, wonderfully embodying this choreography as decadent as it is exuberant populated with buttocks, breasts and hips revealed by the transparent underwear of Cadolle, "
the lingerie supplier founded by Herminie Cadolle, who invented the bra – then called “corselet-gorge” – in 1889
” as specified in the text sent by the house.
Although no image can unfortunately do justice to this live parade, you absolutely must watch the video on the Margiela website or social networks which, since that night, have been broadcasting extracts on a loop.
Many speak of nostalgia, that of an era of fashion when the Gallianos and the McQueens changed the fashion of the fashion shows with their audacity and their creativity.
It was before it-bags, before the globalized market.
Thanks to Renzo Rosso, president of the OTB group, who took the crazy gamble of hiring the sulphurous designer exactly ten years ago.
Thanks to John for this moment.