160 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 22, 2003

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 160—133SC.—LIVE OPI ART—R 12481—EXTREMELY CRITICAL CUT TO BE WATCHED THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PRESS RUN—GLASGOW—PLEASE PULL KODAK APPROVAL AND CHECK TO SEE THAT IT MATCHES OUR SUPPLED MATCHPRINT SO THAT WE CAN ATTAIN A GOOD PRESS RUN. FINALLY. PLEASE SEND BOTH PROOFS TO RICK CARTER IN DANVILLE—THANKS!—P.S. PLEASE DO NOT PULL THIS PAGE OUT BY 1/16. PLEASE KEEP IN NORMAL POSITION!! PROFILES THE FANTASIST

How John Galliano reimagined fashion.

BY MICHAEL SPECTER

ast July, three hours before the first had refused to alter his normal rou- Lmodel—wearing a flamenco skirt tine: just after dawn on the day of the flecked with purple polka dots and cut show, he jogged three miles to his gym, from more than a hundred and fifty where his exercise program includes metres of crinoline, organza, and geor- hundreds of sit-ups and frequent boxing gette crêpe—stepped onto the runway matches. Even he acknowledges that he at the Christian Dior haute-couture has an almost demonic desire to perfect show, held in the Hippodrome d’Au- his body. “I am a completely obsessive teuil, John Galliano, the House of Dior’s man, and that comes out more clearly forty-two-year-old design director, set- in times of stress,” Galliano told me tled anxiously into a tiny, makeshift before the show. “Whatever I do, I like dressing room directly behind the stage. to do it until it can’t be done anymore. Show days are tense for any fashion It doesn’t matter if it’s work or the gym designer—a season’s worth of sales can or some things I might not even want ride on the result—but Galliano had to mention.” more on his mind than clothing. He was Galliano arrived in Paris in 1990, keeping a secret from hundreds of his a nearly destitute punk with unmistak- employees at Dior, from scores of fash- able talent and an unrivalled reputation ion writers who had just arrived in Paris, for personal excess. At the time, many even from many of his closest friends: designers were operating under the in- three days earlier, Galliano’s father had fluence of Japanese-inspired minimal- died, and, at exactly the moment that ism. The eighties were over and the era his presence in the Dior atelier, on the of the pouffe was out of vogue. The Avenue Montaigne, was considered es- models, often wearing subtly tailored sential, Galliano had flown to Gibraltar black clothing, would walk quietly down to bury him. the runway under dim lights. They Galliano is often described as a bla- would twirl and walk back to the stage, tant exhibitionist; he also happens to and that would be the show. Galliano be shy. He didn’t want people to know was appalled. He thinks about fashion about his father’s death, because he didn’t shows the way Steven Spielberg thinks want them to be distracted from the about movies; he believes in spectacle, preparations for the show. Fewer than complication, suspense. “I met John in a dozen people knew where he had gone. 1984 at the show he put on to gradu- He disappeared and returned to Paris ate from art school in London,” Jeremy two days later, on a jet lent to him by Healy, a well-known d.j. who is among Bernard Arnault, his boss, who is the Galliano’s closest friends, told me. “My chairman of L.V.M.H., France’s largest girlfriend was modelling, and when she luxury-goods company. Galliano then walked down the runway she had a tree worked through the night, fitting mod- branch coming out of her head and she els and making final adjustments to was waving a dead mackerel. An actual their clothes. By the time he reached dead fish.The whole show was like that. his dressing room, he looked numb. It takes a lot to shock me. But I just Still, Galliano is a man who believes thought, What the hell is this bloke up deeply that appearances matter, and he to?” The graduation show was a suc-

PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD AVEDON Galliano in New York. “I just think every woman deserves to be desired,” he says. “Is that really asking too much?”

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 161—133SC.—LIVE OPI ART—R 12481—EXTREMELY CRITICAL CUT TO BE WATCHED THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PRESS RUN—GLASGOW—PLEASE PULL KODAK APPROVAL AND CHECK TO SEE THAT IT MATCHES OUR SUPPLED MATCHPRINT SO THAT WE CAN ATTAIN A GOOD PRESS RUN. FINALLY. PLEASE SEND BOTH PROOFS TO RICK CARTER IN DANVILLE—THANKS!—P.S. PLEASE DO NOT PULL THIS PAGE OUT BY 1/16. PLEASE KEEP IN NORMAL POSITION!!—#2 PAGE cess, and it convinced Galliano that the bizarre—and even the infamous—sells. Since then, he has never wavered; in NORTH OF MANHATTAN the past decade, he has sent trapeze art- ists, sailor boys, and naughty schoolgirls You can take the Dyre Avenue bus to where the subway terminates down the runway, not to mention nuns just inside the Bronx in bondage and even a version of home- and be downtown before you realize less tramps. how quickly your body has escaped your mind, Galliano has staged fashion shows stretching down the tracks on a beam at the Paris Opéra and at the Gare until the band snaps and the body slips free and is gone, d’Austerlitz, where he hired an antique out the crashing doors, through the stiles, steam train to ferry the models about and up the long chutes, the platform, which he turned into a to burn both ways at once down the avenues, North African souk, with more than a ecstatic in its finitude, score of half-naked men serving mint with all the other bodies, tea and a floor covered with imported the bundles of molecules rust-colored sand. Last fall, inspired by fusing and dispersing on the sidewalks. a trip to China, Galliano flew a dozen Ten to the hundredth power, Shaolin monks to Paris, and sent them bundles of molecules are looking at paintings, thundering down the catwalk twirling bundles of molecules are eating corn muffins, swords and swinging numchucks. He crab cakes, shad roe, spring lamb, rice pudding. also imported a troupe of Chinese acro- Bundles of molecules are talking to each other, bats who, positioned at the stage en- sotto voce or in a commanding voice— trance, spun plates on foot-long sticks. “I agree with you one hundred per cent, Dog”; There was even a girl in a pink tutu rid- “I looked for you today, but you’d already gone”; ing a bicycle on top of a parasol carried “I’ve left the Amended Restated Sublease Agreement on your desk”; by a Chinese elder. In the International “I’m going home now, Herald Tribune, Suzy Menkes called it and you think about what you did.” “the most staggering example of self- The ear grows accustomed to wider and wider intervals. indulgent luxury since Louis XIV held The eye senses shapes in the periphery court at Versailles”—where, by the way, toward which it dares not turn to look. Galliano had presented Dior’s previous One bundle is selling another a playback machine, winter collection. a six-square-inch wax-paper reticule Galliano alters his look for each of powdered white rhinoceros horn, show, and he cares at least as much an off-season-discounted ticket to Machu Picchu, about his own appearance as he does a gas-powered generator about those of Nicole Kidman and for when the lights go out, Gwen Stefani, both of whom he often a dime bag of Mexican brown. dresses. The morning of this summer’s It is four o’clock in the afternoon. haute-couture show, Galliano put on a The sunlight is stealing inch by inch pair of carefully distressed bluejeans down the newly repointed red brick wall. with perfectly frayed cuffs—which cov- She comes into the kitchen wrapped in the quilt ered his sandals but not the toenails he had recently painted a glossy shade that he calls “cosmic blue.” Galliano’s per- so that he would look like a toreador Many things had been left unsaid be- sonal hair-and-makeup team had been when he took his victory lap. (Most de- tween the two men—among them that briefed in advance on the look he wanted signers simply dart onto the runway Galliano is gay. (“It was all very Latin to achieve, which was inspired by the at the end of a show; a few take a quick and complicated between me and my evolution of dance. “I am feeling very stroll in the company of the models. father,” he told me.) Galliano paced on a Spanish tango dirty creepy with oily Galliano struts the catwalk all by him- zebra-skin rug that had been sent from black hair,” he said. His stylist got the self, and he does it with the hauteur of his atelier. Two six-by-eight-foot blow- message: he glued a stringy goatee onto Naomi Campbell.) ups of the model Angela Lindvall, glis- Galliano’s chin and trimmed it to a neat By the time guests started filing into tening and full of desire, dominated the triangle; after that, he spent half an hour the tent, however, Galliano looked weary little room. curling Galliano’s hair and then applied and depressed. His father was a plum- “This day is going to be hard,” Gal- a thick coat of mascara to the lashes ber, a quiet, stern man who labored for liano said.“But I can deal with that later. beneath his dark-brown eyes. Galliano years in one of South London’s dingi- Right now, I need to focus on the show. wore hoop earrings. His muscles were est precincts before retiring and mov- I want people to forget about their elec- oiled, then covered by a layer of grime— ing, with Galliano’s mother, to Spain. tricity bills, their jobs, everything. It’s

162 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 22, 2003

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 162—133SC. frank clothing so many women wear. “You cannot name many people who and watches as he fries eggs. completely change fashion, and John “After what just happened, you want to eat?” she says in disgust. is one of them,” André Leon Talley, Will she or will she not, back in the bedroom, Vogues’ editor-at-large, told me. Talley lift the gun from the holster is the person who Galliano says is most and put it in her purse? The mind, meanwhile, responsible for bringing his work to a is still somewhere around Tremont Avenue, larger public. “The sexy slip dress, the panting down the tracks, straining spaghetti straps, everything inspired from the past to the vanishing present. by lingerie and by the curves of a wom- It will never catch up an’s body—that is all John,” Talley said. and touch the moment. It will always be Others agree. “John is really the ref- in this tunnel of its forever, erence point for the rest of us,” one where aquamarine crusted bulbs feed on a darkness of his competitors, the designer Diane that looks all around without seeing, von Furstenberg, told me. “Because we and fungus, earlike, starved for light, sprouts are making clothes, and he is making from walls where drops of rusted water magic.” condense and drip. In the mid-nineties, Bernard Ar- nault, who oversees the L.V.M.H. con- Don’t say I didn’t warn you about this. glomerate’s luxury holdings—Louis Don’t say my concern for your welfare Vuitton, Moët, and Hennessy—along never extended to my sharing the terrible and addictive secrets with Christian Dior and other compa- that only death can undo. nies, decided that the group needed to Because I’m telling you now attract younger shoppers who were more that you can also take the same bus north, adventurous than their mothers. Among crossing over against the traffic spilling out of the mall Arnault’s properties was the couture and waiting twenty minutes in the kiosk with the Drambuie ad. house founded by Hubert de Givenchy There. Isn’t that better? in 1952. Givenchy had a talent for cre- More passengers are getting off than on. ating clothes that made a woman look The girl with the skates going home from practice innocent and sexy at the same time, will soon get off, as will but in recent years the look had come to the old woman whose license to drive has been taken from her. be viewed as prissy and dated. Arnault They will enter houses with little gazebos tucked in their gardens. wanted somebody to pull the house into And then, for just a while, the mind will disembark from the body, the modern era, and Galliano was ev- relaxed on its contoured plastic seat, erything that the understated and delib- and go out to make fresh tracks in the snow erate Marquis de Givenchy was not. and stand and breathe under the imaginary trees— When Arnault actually gave Galliano the horsehair pine, the ambergris tree, Givenchy’s job, late in 1995, many peo- the tree that the bulbul loves, ple were shocked (including the sixty- the nebula tree . . . eight-year-old Givenchy himself, who learned about the appointment when —Vijay Seshadri he read it in a news release issued by his own press office). Galliano became the first British designer to take over a fantasy time. My goal is really very signer of the Year in England. (He has major French fashion house in nearly a simple: when a man looks at a woman since won the award three more times— century and a half—since Charles Fred- wearing one of my dresses, I would like the only person ever to do so.) Critics erick Worth was appointed by Napo- him basically to be saying to himself, often dismissed Galliano as a sort of leon III to dress the Empress Eugénie. ‘I have to fuck her.’ ” He shrugged his dressmaking Barnum: his clothes were It would have been difficult under any shoulders. “I just think every woman exquisite, but he was too much the show- circumstances for the staid French fash- deserves to be desired. Is that really ask- man—and his outfits often seemed more ion establishment to accept the appoint- ing too much?” suited to the pageantry of public rela- ment of a foreigner to run a firm whose tions than to profits. Yet his effect on the refined image was represented most fa- hen John Galliano began show- way women dress is almost impossible mously by Audrey Hepburn. But John Wing collections in Paris, at the to overstate, and it became apparent as Galliano? A flamboyant South Lon- age of thirty, he was already considered soon as he graduated from St. Martin’s don night-club habitué who looked like to possess one of Britain’s most origi- School of Art, in 1984. More than any a buccaneer, with his bandannas, pen- nal, if outrageous, fashion minds. Three other designer working today, Galliano cil mustache, and shoulder-length hair? years earlier, he had been named De- is responsible for the sheer and sexually “When John went to Givenchy, he cre-

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 22, 2003 163

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 163—133SC. of Galliano’s ascent, when, in 1996, Ar- nault moved him to the House of Dior— which, along with Chanel, is the best- known and most highly regarded fash- ion brand. Galliano had never held a regular job for any length of time before he went to Givenchy; now he would have to supervise nearly a thousand em- ployees and oversee multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns, and do it all, dauntingly, in the atelier created by one of his heroes, Christian Dior. Certainly, no single event had more impact on the way women dressed in the twentieth century than the intro- duction, by Dior in 1947, of the New Look, which featured opulent, romantic clothes whose rounded shoulders and tightly cinched waists seemed risqué and ebullient to a country just emerging from the devastation of the Second World War. “Dior has done for Paris couture what the taxi drivers did for France at “I’m through with apparel. From now on, it’s just accessories.” the Battle of the Marne,” one fashion writer said at the time. Instantly,the firm •• became a touchstone of French quality and finesse. By 1949, Dior accounted for seventy-five per cent of the Parisian ated more ‘wow’ than any other designer war. Reporters would appear constantly clothes worn by foreigners and five per in Paris at that time,” Joseph Boitano, at his parents’ home in Streatham. They cent of France’s over-all exports. Arnault, a senior vice-president at Saks, told me. followed his slightly mystified father to in selecting Galliano, had handed a na- “He still does. But people were not ready work and asked his mother countless tional treasure to an outsider. “You can- for him yet. There was a lot of surprise.” questions that she had no desire to an- not imagine how shocking it was to ap- In Europe, fashion is a blood sport, swer. (“I got so sick of seeing my father point him—this was Dior, for heaven’s and the Parisian lunching class couldn’t called a plumber in every article,” Gal- sake, Dior,” André Leon Talley said to get enough of the Givenchy saga. French liano recalled not long before his father me one day, his voice rising sharply each critics used the word “capitulation,” and died. “People are always talking about time he uttered the word “Dior.” “Can implied that Arnault’s choice was a sure how I am a plumber’s son. I am my fa- you imagine? A young radical British sign of the nation’s cultural decline. The ther’s son primarily. What he chose to punk at the firm that represented the comments of the couturier Valentino do as a career was his choice and he did arch-tradition of French luxury.” were typical:“He has a wonderful imag- it very, very well.”) The French papers For a while, Galliano struggled with ination, but I am not sure that techni- reported regularly, and somewhat glee- his legacy,but within a year the company cally he knows everything about how fully, that Galliano’s departure was im- was making money again and his trans- to make a dress.” Within a month of ar- minent. Arnault was forced regularly to formation was complete: in less than a riving at Givenchy, however, Galliano announce that it was not. Eventually, decade, Galliano had gone from sleeping astonished seamstresses by returning though, Galliano’s technical skill became on the floors of his friends’ apartments several sample dresses along with written apparent even to those who did not like to a life as the emperor of the most suc- instructions on how to improve them the results. He had, by the time he ar- cessful fashion house in the world. Al- so that they fit in a less dowdy way: rived in Paris, mastered the art of cutting though neither Dior nor he will reveal “Tighter, smaller, tighter, smaller, tighter, dresses along the bias—against the grain his salary, he earns millions of dollars a smaller,” his note said in its entirety.“The rather than on seams—so that a gar- year, more in a month than his father place was a bit of a dowager when I ment would move more easily and that earned in his life. It has been a perilous arrived,” he told me, “and I felt that a woman’s curves would be revealed and time for the fashion industry; sales have you didn’t really need to get trussed up not concealed. It is a difficult technique, fallen, many companies have cut back, to look great anymore. I wanted to free because, as Galliano puts it, the dress and some have closed. But at Chris- women from wearing corsets and big must become “like oily water running tian Dior Couture, which includes the taffeta skirts.” through your fingers.” ready-to-wear accessories business, sales Throughout the next year, Galliano The beleaguered French fashion élite rose forty-one per cent last year, to was covered in the press as if he were a had only begun to recover from the shock $535.6 million. The company reported

164 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 22, 2003

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 164—133SC.—LIVE OPI A8696 profits of thirty-six million dollars, up the many licenses—bags, shoes, Baby to see what a John Galliano airplane sharply from 2001, and projects sales Dior, underwear, eyewear, perfumes, and would look like, or a hotel. I don’t want of as much as a billion dollars by 2006. swimwear. Galliano even designed the ever to say there is something that John “John Galliano will certainly figure as hangers in his boutique, and decided Galliano won’t do.” one of the greatest designers of his how many layers of paint should be ap- time,” Arnault has said. “Through his plied to the industrial-steel beams that ne overcast morning in late June, I work at Dior, he has been able to bring hold the building together. Visiting the Owalked to the eighteenth-century modernity to the ultimate luxury house boutique one day, I watched as Galliano building where Galliano lives with his and to envision the fashion of the third checked nearly every dress to make cer- boyfriend and their Jack Russell ter- millennium.” tain it was hanging in the right way and rier. It is just a few blocks from the Pi- Galliano actually has two jobs. In ad- in the right place. He even ducked into casso Museum, in the Marais, one of dition to Dior, he produces his own line the bathroom (which has quilted, em- the oldest parts of Paris. Most Parisians of clothing, and this year he opened his broidered walls) and the dressing room were still in bed, but Galliano’s driver first boutique—a nearly two-thousand- (whose floors are covered in calfskin) was stationed out front and so was Fré- square-foot space, on the Rue Saint- to make certain that his newest prod- déric Vaché, one of Galliano’s two phys- Honoré, which cost millions of dollars uct, the Galliano Diptyque candle, was ical trainers. (Whether he is travelling to renovate—and he has plans for bou- burning properly. in India, China, Russia, or the South tiques in London, New York, and Tokyo. Galliano has developed a predatory of France, he is never without one of Galliano’s first dress for Dior was a eye for the bottom line. His own label, them. He also consults a sports doctor lingerie-inspired slip created for the Prin- which had no more than a dozen retail nearly every week: “He keeps a chart cess of Wales,who wore it as the guest of outlets in the world when he was ap- that shows my most stressful periods. At honor at a dinner given at the Metropol- pointed to Dior, now has hundreds, and that point, my cardiovascular work in- itan Museum of Art in December, 1996. Valérie Hermann, the president of Gal- creases and my intake of protein de- Since then, his clothes have been cov- liano, projects that sales will grow by as creases at nighttime.”) eted and hoarded both by celebrities and much as twenty-five per cent this year. Galliano emerged from the court- by women who have never even met a Galliano has also just introduced a line yard looking carefully dishevelled but famous person. The delicately embroi- of men’s clothing—a typical blend of wide awake. His hair was tied back in dered gold-and-green shift that Gal- the bizarre and the conservative, with a bun, and he wore a Russell Athletic liano made for Nicole Kidman for the suit sleeves that close not with buttons T-shirt over shorts and sneakers. We 1997 Academy Awards assured her a but with the type of hooks and eyes jogged for about five kilometres through role among Hollywood’s most stylish found on bras. And his ambition is any- the Marais, then along the banks of the women. Galliano’s Dior saddlebag, now thing but sated. I once asked if he could Seine, where Galliano pointed out var- sold in shops from Hong Kong to Hous- see himself designing furniture or cars, ious women whose stylish attire caught ton, has helped the company earn mil- or even houses. “Yes,” he replied in- his eye. lions. Two years ago, he was called to stantly. “Yes to all of it. I would never We ran past La Samaritaine, which Buckingham Palace, where the Queen put a limit on my goals. I would love Arnault recently bought. Galliano pointed awarded him the C.B.E. for his service to Great Britain. Galliano doesn’t delegate easily, but neither did Dior. “A Frenchman we’d never heard about till seven years ago is worshiped as a dictator of fashion by every Eve whose fig leaf proved inadequate,” an article in the Saturday Evening Post declared in 1953. Dior would laugh about his role but said of the women he dressed, without irony,“My dream is to save them from nature.” Gal- liano shares the view. “I am a hopeless romantic, and I want to make women feel sexy and beautiful.” He runs the com- pany almost as single-mindedly as Dior himself did: he over- sees not only the clothes and the advertising campaigns but “You are going to wish you had cancelled this appointment.”

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 165—133SC.—LIVE OPI ART A8467 at a woman strolling along the Left out of necessity. I loved that collection.” misses his debauched past. “You know,” Bank. “Look,” he noted, approvingly. We ran past Notre-Dame and up he said, as we raised ourselves from the “She is wearing cycling clothes with the Rue Poissonnière, where, accord- mats, “if you had been with me at this a vintage Chanel top. That’s major.” ing to Galliano, the best French knock- hour fifteen years ago we might have (“Major” is a word Galliano uses often, offs of designer goods are produced. been doing an entirely different kind of always with zeal. As in “Did you see Frédéric, the trainer, ran beside us, and sit-up by now.” Nicole in ‘The Hours’? She was major,” every few minutes would offer annoying Galliano was a vigorous participant in or “Have you ever tried the steak at La- tips (“Your arms are too tense,” “Your the wild life of London in the nineteen- pérouse? It’s major.”) A bit farther along, posture is poor,” and so on). After half eighties. For students at St. Martin’s, we ran past a stunning woman, and as an hour, we arrived at our destination: as for others, that life revolved heavily we did he turned his head to me and Galliano’s gym. around the clubs, and Taboo, which was shouted, “She is so very John Galliano!” Galliano never worked out before he held on Thursday nights at Maximus, The woman, who was in her twenties, moved to Paris. How, I wondered, did a in Leicester Square, was at the center had short, spiky blond hair, and was wear- guy who was famous for staying out all of it. The club had an outrageous rep- ing silver stiletto sandals and a brown night—and for disappearing, sometimes utation (in fact, its history will be re- beaded dress under what looked like a for days, after each of his collections was counted this fall in a Broadway musi- ripped black sweatshirt. Her right fist shown—become such a fitness fanatic? cal starring one of its best-known cus- was wrapped around a two-thousand- “I got a grownup job,” he replied. “I was tomers, Boy George).“It ended up seed- dollar handbag. It was unclear to me drinking coffee and diet sodas to give me ier than the bottom of a birdcage,” one whether she was on her way to the of- the buzz to get through the day. At regular has said. “You had bodies lying fice or coming home from a very long night, to come down I would open a on the dance floor. You didn’t know night on the town. bottle of red wine to relax. Do you know if they’d O.D.’d or were just messing Galliano often refers to things he sees what I mean? Also my change of diet. I about. It was very extreme and very dan- on the street or at work as “very John ate purely crap before I came to Paris. I gerous.” No chemical or carnal pursuit Galliano.” I asked him what that meant. literally didn’t know what a carbohydrate was off-limits there.“It was ’84, ’85 that it “It is something incredibly refined mixed or a protein was. was really happening,” Galliano told me with something savage,” he explained. “But then I went to Givenchy,” he one day over lunch. “All these creative “Savage” is another of his favorite com- continued. “And I was responsible for energies from the film world, the music pliments. Tribes of all kinds interest two lines and a lot of work and many world—it would all come together on him, and he collects the Native Ameri- employees. I needed to find some kind Thursday night. I would spend the en- can photographs of Edward S. Curtis. of balance in my life.” Balance is a diffi- tire week putting my outfit together. It “Refined is boring and savage can be too cult concept for Galliano. Even now, would be a full-time job, and I took obvious,” he said. John Galliano is all Frédéric told me, he has simply shifted it seriously. Taboo became quite notori- about trying to strike the perfect balance his obsession with night life to an ob- ous. There was a lot of drug use. It was between the two. session with his physique. “John doesn’t the place to be. It became harder and It was on a run like this that Galli- just want to have good pecs,” Frédéric harder to get in, and the harder it was the ano became fascinated with the people said, as Galliano lowered himself onto more people would try, and that made who live on the stoops near the Seine— a bench to lift weights. “John wants it even more exclusive.” what he calls the “wet world” and what to have the best pecs in Paris.” Galli- And his drug use? “Any kid in the almost everyone else on earth calls the ano’s entire day is built around making eighties used drugs. I went to St. Mar- homeless. He built his 2000 fall couture sure that he gets his time in at the gym. tin’s”—he said it as if that alone an- show around a concept of how they “Everyone says it’s the same high as swered the question. “It was a new dressed. “There is this whole world of with drugs,” he told me. “It’s that lit- romantic movement, and one did exper- fantastic characters who live there, I be- tle burst of light you are always look- iment. I am glad I did. And I am glad lieve through choice,” he told me. The ing for.” that, somehow, I got through it. It clothes—ripped and reconstructed— Frédéric had us stretch a bit to un- helped me evolve. And I have changed, were remarkable displays of fashion wind from our “warmup” run. “Ready thank God. I would not want to be stuck technique and history, and they were for the abs?” he asked. It was a rhetorical in the Taboo days for the rest of my supposed to reflect the inventiveness of question. He put us next to each other life. You have no idea what went on street people. Galliano was picketed and on mats and started on a long, slow se- there.” reviled, though, for what was considered ries of sit-ups. Then crunches. Then a callous attitude toward the homeless. more sit-ups. We did scores of them. alliano was raised in the ethnic Riot police surrounded the Dior offices, It seemed to last for hours; Galliano Gstew of South London. His fa- on the Avenue Montaigne, and Galliano is impish, and, while he is blindingly ther was from Gibraltar, where Gal- had to apologize. “I saw just the roman- single-minded and ambitious, he has liano, whose full name is Juan Carlos tic side of it, the poetic side of it,” he told not lost his sense of how odd it has been Antonio Galliano-Guillen, was born. me.“The criticism was that I was taking to move from a life as a dissolute party His mother is Spanish.“To get to Spain, the piss out of homeless people, but the boy to that of an international business- you had to take the boat, because the point was that they are creating beauty man. There are times when he clearly frontiers were closed,” he said. “We had

166 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 22, 2003

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 166—133SC. DEMONT THOROUGHLY MOD Peggy Moffitt first modelled Rudi Gernreich’s famous topless bathing suit in 1964. Now Rei Kawakubo has reinterpreted it, in a new line called Peggy Moffitt/Comme des Garçons. Photograph by William Claxton.

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 167—133SC.—LIVE OPI ART—R 12464—CRITICAL CUT TO BE WATCHED THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PRESS RUN to go through Tangier. I remember the sepia ink in this very kind of curious market, the smells, the colors, the people. light. I could just imagine these fantastic It was all very exciting. Romance. Latin. creatures marching, running across the When we moved to London, my mother wet shiny cobblestones of Paris.” brought it all with us. Even the music. Galliano’s tutor at St. Martin’s sug- My mother taught me to flamenco- gested that he turn the drawings into dance on tabletops—it makes more outfits for his graduation presentation. noise. She had a big influence on the “I cut clothes that could be worn inside way I look at the world and the way I out, upside down, and by both boys and dress people.” girls,” he said. “Very androgynous, but Galliano has two sisters, both of huge romantic blouses with tricolors whom live in London.“We were dressed and hems that rolled up and were split. as well as my mother could dress us for You have to make three presentations. any event, even if it was just to go to the The first went really well. By the second, corner shop. We were always bathed, I was suddenly put on as the last act. talced, perfumed, hair slicked back. I was I thought, Something has gone down groomed to a T. That is very Spanish.” here.” And by the third people were Galliano went to a boys’ school in Lon- struggling just to find seats. The own- don, and he intended to study languages. ers of Browns, for many years Lon- It turned out, however, that he had a don’s most adventurous fashion store, gift for illustration. “At the end of that attended one of the shows and bought course, they suggested I apply to a fash- Galliano’s entire student collection for ion school like St. Martin’s. I had never their South Moulton Street store.“I had been in that kind of milieu before. It to literally wheel my collection up the was totally liberating. street to their shop,” he told me. “I “I didn’t have a grant, and I was liv- couldn’t even afford to put the clothes ing at home. There wasn’t much money. in a cab. And they put one of the coats And so I got a job as a dresser, at the Na- in the window and it was bought by tional Theatre. That changed my life. Diana Ross.” I was a good dresser. It helped shape After graduating from St. Martin’s, my view of drama, of clothing, of cos- Galliano set up a studio in London. He tume—the way people dress.” I asked had trouble earning a living, though. His him what a “good” dresser was. “I was talent seemed outweighed by a lack of always on time. The clothes were al- business skill and by a considerable de- ways clean. If it was a period piece, the sire to enjoy life, particularly at night. “I Eton collars were chalk-white, things had less than no money,” he said. “Zero. had been pressed, moleskin top hats I was living above the garage where the would be smoothed with the oil of studio was. Dodging the rent man. Pro- my own hands, I would be in the right fessionally speaking, it was not the great- place at the right time even if it meant est moment for me.” lying under a fucking stage for two Increasingly, he sought refuge in the hours until the actor made his entrance. London club scene. “When times were I worked with Judi Dench, Sir Ralph hard, John really couldn’t do anything Richardson, and they were people who else,” Jeremy Healy said. “We were taught me very much about bodies and at clubs till dawn day after day. It was clothes. And how they commanded their insane, but what was he going to do? space.” He couldn’t get the work. I encouraged It still had never occurred to him that him to be more commercial. He always he might design clothes for a living. “I refused.” For all its raw energy, London tend to become whatever it is I am work- could never compete with Paris for at- ing on, and I was drawing pictures of the tention within the fashion world. Brit- French Revolution,” he went on. “I was ish designers like Vivienne Westwood inspired by Robespierre, ‘les incroyables.’ and Ossie Clark have often been seen And I was looking like this down-and- as daring or eccentric, sometimes bril- out French tramp. Living it, breathing liant, but they almost never earned the it. Drawing by candlelight. Producing respect given to French, Italian, or even parchment paper soaked with bits of American designers. It is also the case “When I’m not having a good bread that are then stained with tea. that France has a collection of skilled hair day, you’ll know.” Drawing with a calligraphy pen and needleworkers and a tradition of caring

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 168—133SC.—LIVE OPI ART—A 8802—#2 PAGE—REMOVED GUTTER CREDIT about clothing, which have helped Paris we had written ourselves. I went and got many now see as Galliano’s alter ego, retain its position as the center of the about five hundred rusty keys and sent were matching stockings with shoes, fashion world. them as invitations.” He flooded the place gloves, jewelry,hair clips, and underwear. with dry ice, so that you could see the When they assembled items they thought “ had to go to Paris to continue in texture of the air. A broken chandelier worked well together—say, lime-green I my career,” Galliano said.“There re- was placed on the living-room floor. It leggings, black gloves, and a mesh pushup ally wasn’t a choice. I was not progressing was decadent and romantic. Stephen bra—they put them in a giant Ziploc bag, and I was not getting better.” Galliano’s Jones, the London milliner, created a se- pasted a label on the pack, and set it aside chief lieutenant, Steven Robinson, went ries of hats that looked like Möbius strips to go with one of the outfits. with him. “I was at an art school near and worked as a perfect complement to It was an early-summer evening, London and I did an internship sewing Galliano’s austere dresses. None of the before this year’s record heat started buttons for John,” Robinson, a quiet, participants charged for their work, not to settle too heavily on the city, and the heavyset man who moves with the grace even the world’s most famous models— room was filled with peonies, Galliano’s of a dancer, told me. “I was too shy to Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, Naomi favorite flowers. “They are the last pe- come alone; I had to bring a friend. I Campbell, and Christy Turlington. onies of the season,” he said, as I stared stayed a week and then I stayed some Galliano had no time to order fancy at dozens of purple and pink buds.“And more. And I went to college and worked fabric; he cut every dress from the same that makes them the sweetest.” Fla- one day a week. Then two days, then bolt of cloth. “I made the dresses from menco music was wailing so loudly that four days.” Galliano and Robinson were black satin-backed crêpe, because it was it was hard to think. “Flamenco music not exactly welcomed with open arms cheap and I could use the matte and the is always about somebody’s pain,” Gal- in Paris. “We were producing the most shiny sides to make it look like there was liano said. “It never comes out O.K. in beautiful things, but for dinner we were more to it than there was,” he recalls. the end. It’s the perfect music to make eating a can of beans on a Bunsen burner,” “There were, I think, two touches of dresses by.” Galliano said. One day, André Leon pink. Kate and Christy had pink outfits. Galliano sat alone at a table in the Talley went to visit Galliano and Robin- Those were the only colors in the entire middle of the room, a pack of Marlboros son at Galliano’s atelier, near the Bastille. show. We just didn’t have time for any- in front of him at all times. He had just “He was horrified, and he immediately thing else.” returned from his father’s funeral, and he started buying us McDonald’s and basi- The show became perhaps the most wasn’t talking much. Every twenty min- cally fed us to keep us going,” Galliano celebrated fashion event since Dior in- utes or so, a beautiful young woman would said.Talley brought his boss, Anna Win- troduced his New Look. “It was really a wander in, take off her clothes, and sit in tour, the editor of Vogue, to see Galliano’s watershed moment in modern fashion a corner. Only after she was strapped work. She loved what she saw, and she history,” Diane von Furstenberg told me. into a corset by five assistants, or dressed quickly became his most influential sup- “We all knew we were seeing something in a fringed silk aubergine gown made porter. “Before I knew it, Anna had that had not been seen before.The clothes with, among other things, fifteen pounds called the collection to New York for a were sublime, simple and feminine. You of glass tubes, would any of the men picture shoot,” Galliano said. “Then she wanted to wear every single dress.” pay attention to her. (At one point in the invited me to come, too.” He attended a Orders started to pour in, and Gal- evening, I watched as Gaytten and Rob- series of dinner parties filled with “so- liano barely had the means to fill them. inson adjusted the waist and crotch of a cialites, all these fantastic people, and I “This was it,” he recalls.“I could not fuck dress worn by Natalia Vodianova, one of was suddenly meeting bankers from up or make a mistake. It had to be a very the world’s more alluring models. They Paine Webber—me meeting bankers professional business or I was never get- might as well have been measuring the and them wanting to talk to me. Can ting another chance to make a dress.” height of a kitchen cabinet.) you imagine that?” Every once in a while, Galliano would He still needed to convince the bank- t about eight o’clock on the night stand up, take a pair of scissors, and ers and buyers that he was serious and Abefore Galliano’s most recent show, show the seamstresses in the room that stable. To do that, Galliano had to pro- his two main collaborators were lying he wanted something cut tighter or in duce something for the fall, 1994, Paris on their stomachs on the floor of the a different way. “It has to be raw and collections. They were only three weeks ballroom-size fitting space in the Dior sophisticated at the same time,” Gal- away, and he had no cash, no venue, no headquarters. Bill Gaytten, who has di- liano explained to Raffaele Ilardo, the clothes. Talley persuaded a socialite rected the cutting of Galliano’s clothes head of the atelier. “You need to slash named Sao Schlumberger to lend Gal- for twenty years, and Robinson, whom it more.” By 3 A.M., all the models had liano her large, unused, and slightly de- appeared and Galliano had studied the crepit house near Saint-Sulpice. clothes carefully—usually looking at With the help of Robinson and them in the mirror rather than directly. Amanda Harlech, who now acts as the There was more to do: several of the creative consultant at Chanel but for dresses were not completed, and there years was the muse who helped Galliano was embroidery and detail work to define his style, Galliano filled the house worry about, not to mention the com- with dried leaves. “And love letters that plicated mix of Healy’s music, which

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 22, 2003 169

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 169—133SC.—LIVE SPOT—N43705T—PLEASE REPORT AND INSPECT ON QUALITY—#2 PAGE would have to synchronize exactly with could be a very John Galliano moment.” and in a size far bigger than any life. the light show and with the models’ Steven Robinson shook his head and Sweat clings to her skin so clearly that entrances. said, “This is so much work for twenty you almost feel obligated to examine Galliano’s collections are mapped out minutes you can hardly believe we keep every pore. like a military campaign.They start with doing it.” On the fifth floor, Dior seamstresses a conversation among Galliano, Robin- work quietly in white butcher smocks, son, and Gaytten. “We produce these alliano’s place in two related but tape measures dangling from their necks. books, and they become the bible from Gdistinct fashion worlds makes for One can sense the effort and concentra- which we work,” Galliano told me. some odd contrasts. In mood and tem- tion as they spend hundreds of hours “Then we talk about the concept of the perament, the Dior and Galliano lines preparing the beaded, sequinned, and show. We have to have a new way of could not be more different. Dior ap- bejewelled concoctions that Galliano will cutting or a new way of seeing things. peals to a flashy young crowd. The word put on the runway.His own atelier, in the And that dialogue turns into a sketch, “Eurotrash” comes to mind. Galliano’s more ethnically mixed and funky Twen- and then the work begins.” own line is simpler and more feminine. tieth Arrondissement, has a Middle East- Galliano’s shows are always built When Christian Dior opened his atelier, ern feel to it. There are Turks and Mo- around a theme: one focussed on escap- just after the end of the Second World roccans, and the smell of espresso mingles ing from Russia at the fall of the Ro- War, he bought an old mansion on the with the sounds of reggae. The garden manovs; another was inspired by Napo- Avenue Montaigne. It looked exactly like there is like a jungle, and Galliano told leon.The dresses in the recent collection the salon in “Funny Face”—full of curv- me that it’s the one place in Paris where were intended to portray different as- ing bannisters and stately parlors where he feels completely “safe.” pects of dance—from the tribal rhythms women of leisure could sip tea while con- I had long wondered how on earth one of India to hip-hop. But Galliano did templating the purchase of a ball gown. can make money on haute couture. Even not want simply to make the clothes of, Today, the corridors are lined with stark, in the nineteen-fifties, there were just a say, the flapper era or the tango. That black-and-white pictures from Dior’s few women eager to spend what might be would have bored him.“I want the mod- time of glory: a 1950 Cartier-Bresson a bus conductor’s annual salary on an or- els to look as though they had been photograph of him in his studio examin- nately designed piece of fabric. Who, for dancing for eight days and eight nights,” ing the clothing on a model; another, instance, is likely to buy the most complex he said. “I want to see the sweat and the from 1954, of the designer with Jane dress that Galliano produced for this grime and the exhaustion and the fear Russell. There are also pictures of Mar- show? It was a silk wine-colored gown and the pain. I want agony in the expres- lene Dietrich and the Duchess of Wind- with three hundred and ten pleated inser- sion and in the clothes. I want to feel it. sor. All the photographs are framed in tions, which were used to create the skirt I want to rip and tear it and cut it until black. Turn the corner and you can see and the sleeves.The dress was edged with the pain is in the dresses. And then we another kind of shot entirely: the model a two-hundred-and-twenty-metre strip will create a new dance from that. It Gisele Bündchen, in superrealistic color of black lace, and it had been embroi- dered with a technique made up of three different forms of stitching. There were sequins, pearl drops, and pearl tubes, not to mention hundreds of jet beads. The dress took nineteen people four hundred and twenty hours to make. “Who are you going to sell that to?” I asked. Galliano seemed surprised at my question. “We are turning away orders,” he replied. “But the couture is a labora- tory, and from it I decline my collec- tion”—meaning that he turns the exotic clothing of the runway into many types of outfits that people might actually wear. Indeed, a close examination of the clothes in any Dior boutique will reveal pieces adapted from the couture collec- tion. Today, haute couture functions as Dior’s most powerful marketing tool—it is the basis for everything from dresses to eyewear and shoes. “John uses the cou- ture to work out his most advanced ideas,” Joseph Boitano, of Saks, told me. “But he has a real focus on the business “Just remember, we switch back before we get to town.” and how to drive it and what the cus-

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 170—133SC.—LIVE OPI ART A8708 tomer wants. No matter how wild the shows seem, he never lets go of the cus- tomer.” Galliano gets annoyed by ques- tions about the utility of his dresses. “It’s like going into a museum, looking at a Rothko, and saying, ‘My kid could paint that,’ ” he replied when I asked. “It’s ab- stract and it’s art. Frankly, that ought to be enough. “In case you have the feeling that I am flying too far from the earth, though, you should remember that while I make these dresses I have girls sitting and sketch- ing every step, and at some point I will say,‘You know, that dress is really beauti- ful. That dress we could just cut now.’ It’s the difference between fashion and clothes.” One of his sketch artists stepped over and showed me what he meant. She was carrying a very detailed series of drawings that followed the evolution of one dress from plain to interesting and then to intensely weird. “Of course, I am passionate about the collection and I want to see all the passion and the pain,” Galliano said.“But then I am also think- ing, Fuck, this is a wicked Oscar dress. Let’s just sketch it.” It was getting late. I asked if Galliano cut his cloth to suit the clients or if they had to do what Galliano thought was best. “We are gentle, yet there are some clients that have a fixed idea,” he replied. “There was a charming girl—an Ara- bian client—who wanted to look like Cinderella for her wedding. So I did my interpretation of Cinderella. But no. She •• wanted to look literally like the cartoon Cinderella.The customer is always right, I know, and we tried, we really did try,but the street in Galliano’s corset of duchess drenched with sweat, packed into his cos- this one wanted to look like the Walt satin, which is embroidered with nearly a tume: gray-and-blue embroidered track Disney Cinderella. So we proposed ideas thousand micro-crystals made by Lesage. pants, a mesh corset over a gray T-shirt and sent drawings, and they would come Yet haute couture remains a serious which was cut deep enough to expose his back. ‘I want Cinderella.’ And we would business in Paris. In an age when the red muscles, and suède boots. When he was alter it a bit and they would come back. carpet at the Oscars has become a sort of done, I joined him backstage as he made She just wanted to look like Cinderella, Super Bowl of fashion—and the design- his way, escorted by security men with for God’s sake. It was impossible.” Huff- ers of the dresses worn by actresses are necks the size of refrigerators, toward his ing, then laughing a bit, he said, “But mentioned on television everywhere— tiny dressing space. The fashion editors that was her dream, and in the end we couture clothing may even have gained of the world—joined by celebrities like did it. What other choice was there?” new relevance. During Fashion Week in Jack Nicholson and Elizabeth Hurley— Paris, ask nearly any taxi-driver what were waiting to congratulate him. t is easy to see fashion, particularly time Dior is showing, and you will get “Are you all right?” Galliano asked Ithe haute couture, as irrelevant and the answer; you won’t need to give him me. Sweat was streaming down his face, frivolous. A couture dress is by definition the address. and he looked stunned. I was a little something exceptional, something that Galliano stood silently through his taken aback by the question.“Sure,” I re- cannot be made in a factory or in large show, watching on a monitor backstage plied. “Are you?” quantities. It is also based essentially on until it was time to march down the run- He burst into tears.“I don’t know,” he whim, often strange whims; you are un- way. As he emerged, he was met with a said. “That was for my father today. I likely ever to see a woman walking down roar, and he looked like a bullfighter, hope I would have made him proud.”

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 22, 2003 171

TNY—09/22/03—PAGE 171—133SC.—LIVE OPI ART A7396