There's shocking news... and then there's just, well, genuine shock: no one, certainly no one in fashion could have imagined that today is the first day of a world without John Galliano at Christian Dior.
In the midst of fall fashion shows - especially with the Paris Pret a Porter shows for autumn starting yesterday - news this shocking just doesn't happen. Bad designers come and go. Houses go bankrupt. Collections don't work. But the King of all that is fashion does not just vanish in the middle of the night.
What has rapidly unfolded is basically this: John Galliano was arrested last week for an altercation at a bar in the Marais section of Paris, where he lives. He apparently got into an altercation with a couple, apparently tourists, and may have made an antisemitic remark to the woman (or, according to some reports, he insulted her handbag. I mean, it's not impossible). In any case, Galliano was then suspended from his role as head designer at Dior, throwing a great deal of chaos into Dior's upcoming fall show. But that seemed manageable.
Yesterday, video surfaced at a British tabloid (Galliano is English) of Galliano, in the same bar in the Marais where the altercation took place, making favorable comments about Hitler (Hitler!) and what happened during the Holocaust. It was pretty much a matter of hours before Dior announced that Galliano had been immediately fired, but not before Natalie Portman, who is the new face of perfume Miss Dior Cherie - and Jewish - denounced Galliano and said she would not be associated with him in any way.
"Mind boggling" doesn't begin to describe this turn of events. Galliano has, almost single handedly, been the guiding light for fashion's most dramatic, over the top possibilities. His Dior couture shows, season after season, have been almost instantly legendary. Even his ready to wear shows have been assured, stylish extravaganzas of styles and ideas that demand attention and set the tone for the season. He took the House of Dior - once considered sad and staid after the death of Monsieur Dior - and turned it into an enormously profitable and successful powerhouse (whether his couture line actually makes a profit is another issue altogether). Galliano is a visionary, but one who never lost sight that the real money in designer fashion is in the accessories that the masses can afford - the bags and fragrances and eyewear and makeup that account for most sales.
Whether Galliano is actually gone is still somewhat up in the air - he's apparently hired lawyers and will fight his dismissal, and French labor laws do protect workers from a lot more than American workers... but it's hard to see this working out with Galliano back at the helm of Dior; even if, as reported, he's now headed off to rehab. Indeed, along the lines of Charlie Sheen, one of the other interesting aspects of this story is that Galliano's been rumored to have a drug and alcohol problem for years, but as with Hollywood, the fashion world is loath to actually make such stories public (this, even after years and years of high profile meltdowns, most recently embodied in Donatella Versace and Marc Jacobs). There's a decided component of the creative world which insists on a separate, dangerous standard for the especially creative, ignoring destructive behavior and excusing addiction as some sort of necessary "mind expansion." It really is possible to be highly creative... and highly sober.
No one can, or should, try to defend Galliano; this is just a shocking, unexpected turn. I've been in the same room as Galliano, my friend Jennifer recently met him in Paris, and boht of us feel the shock of people who've known him for years - this just doesn't seem to fit the man we've seen, the man they know. And the idea of a World of Fashion that doesn't have Christian Dior, designed by John Galliano is just unimaginable. This is a seismic shift where one can say, breathlessly, that this does literally change everything. The land without a King! A world without Dior! Bring me a fainting couch!
There's a decided component of the creative world which insists on a separate, dangerous standard for the especially creative, ignoring destructive behavior and excusing addiction as some sort of necessary "mind expansion."
And there's also a decided component of both the creative and consumer worlds that excuses and rewards - you're posting a pic of a collection of his? - pure and simple a-hole behavior as long as the a-hole in question is seen as "successful," however that happens to be measured.
Alcohol may have loosened Galliano's tongue like Mel Gibson before him, but the anti-semiticism was most likely already there.
And the idea of a World of Fashion that doesn't have Christian Dior, designed by John Galliano is just unimaginable.
Unimaginable? It's just this kind of hyperbolic fear of loss, methinks, that bankrolls the Gallianos, Sheens and Gibsons and the behavior you lament.
Posted by: jinb | March 02, 2011 at 07:23 PM