The biannual John Galliano menswear spectacular began this season with a tip of Charlie Chaplin s bowler hat to his silent masterpiece, Modern Times. Dressed as Chaplin, model Scott Barnhill tumbled out of a huge clock backdrop, and Galliano s movie madness began to unspool. Why Charlie? The rationale was that the designer wanted to make a statement about new proportions in menswear, and the Little Tramp s shrunken jacket and baggy pants seemed like a good place to start. Hence, Galliano s dropped-crotch pants and jackets fitted to the body (exaggeratedly so for the show). A trench in a Lurex military twill might not have been specifically Chaplin-esque, but it captured his flagrant dandyism.
Chaplin was followed on the catwalk by Buster Keaton, porkpie hat, lugubrious expression, three-piece suit, and all (kudos to the performances—Galliano is as demanding a director as he is a designer). A group of retro-tailored pieces were really a way of introducing a Death in Venice subtext that allowed the designer to flood the catwalk with boys in his bathing suits and underwear, which must be a particularly lucrative license for him, given the amount of show time he always devotes to this passage.
The finale involved formalwear literally stripped—like its models—of everything that didn t directly enhance the voluminous trousers and evening jackets, reconceptualized with straps, zips, and a generally brazen attitude. Then an orgy of strobe lighting brought the whole shebang to an appropriately surreal close, with Chaplin, Keaton, and half-naked boys crowding the catwalk. The French made Galliano a Chevalier de la Légion d Honneur for his services to fashion. Next time Hollywood hands out the Cecil B. DeMille Award, Galliano would surely be a wortHhy recipient for his services to spectacle.
