Paris Fashion week.
Galliano loses his mind. Again.I love fashion designers who weave together themes, places, art, culture and make me ask, “What the hell was he/she thinking?” And John Galliano seems to be the king of “what the hell was he thinking.” His shows and collections are always so inspired and inspiring. They are a collage, a pastiche of ideas and thoughts that must represent how Galliano thinks… rapid ideas and connections, references, knowledge and a thirst for… well, for the world itself. Galliano’s world seems stuffed to bursting with amazing people, places, colors, epochs and societies.
And for his Fall-Winter ’11-’12 showing at Paris Fashion Week this week, his thematic references included a risky elan vers dieu… émigrés from the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the stylistic iconography of Rudolph Nureyev. Now, I am not sure exactly what it says about me that I can actually follow that train of thought, but it makes oblique sense to me. Thousands fled the Revolution… and Nureyev fled Russia by defecting to France in 1961. Russian = Russian, fleeing = defecting. The ideas seem linked. It all works. And the change from Rasputin-looking men in huge wool coats, enormous chunky cable-knit hats and matted and snow-covered beards to slim androgynous Nureyev in swinging 60s silhouettes and then in sweaty rehearsals could have been a disaster in anyone else’s hands. But Galliano finds the bravado and grand gesture connecting them and makes fireworks. Topping off the collection is a section of embroidered Russian evening pieces that seem breathtaking.
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