The colorful tumult of characters that peopled John Galliano s finale looked like someone had tipped a box of candies on the catwalk. It was almost impossible to absorb the spectacle. But information overload is one of Galliano s most perceptive contributions to the modern fashion lexicon. If his usual polyglot cast of thousands included manga boys from Osaka, Pearly Kings from London s East End, and fearsome Gurkha warriors (plus Jack the Ripper and Quentin Crisp), the thread that held them all together was PUNK. Galliano remains fashion s standard-bearer for his original anarchic, anything-is-possible spirit, and he continues to unhinge the considered response to what he s doing by dumping so much on his audience that you can barely pause to wonder if you ve been had (and that s a pretty punk reaction in itself).
It s become a somewhat formulaic response to play hunt-the-real-clothes in one of Galliano s fashion farragoes, but here goes: the brown leather jacket with the Nehru collar, the madras bits and pieces, a tailored navy jacket with white piping, a pinstriped duster, the croc-stamped biker jacket…I could witter on. But that response can t do justice to the effort of the Galliano team. There was, for example, the segment where Galliano was promoting his underwear license, which was staged as a salute to Quentin Crisp, one of the last great English eccentrics. Milliner Stephen Jones rose to the occasion with a set of supernal hats, and hair and makeup gurus Julien d Ys and Pat McGrath made a glam-rock moment live again. Anything to juice the jocks. Thus did a tip of the cap to a burgeoning corner of the Galliano empire become a splendid piece of entertainment—as well as a reminder that if the Galliano team were having a party while they were making this stuff, they were generous enough to let us in later.
