THE whole team is still there to make a John Galliano show great – Jeremy Healy on music, Orlando Pita on hair, Pat McGrath on make-up, Stephen Jones on hats, and of course Bill Gaytten as creative lead – who worked with Galliano and has taken the reins since his headline-hitting absence.
All the house classics were there too: bias cut, beautiful chiffon and silk dresses, feminine tailored jackets, flirtatious frills and diaphanous, glittering evening gowns. In fact, we found ourselves thinking, you know the drill: as swirling black and white skirts went by followed by finely pleated dresses under jackets gathered into tight waistbands; battered boaters over double plaited hair; woolly white socks tucked into tasselled Mary Janes and soft floral blouses whose print was repeated on ribbons of fabric tucked into the tweed jackets over them.
“It was a serene collection, almost as if all the showmanship we associate with Galliano had been stripped down to present just the most commercial elements,” said Vogue’s Harriet Quick afterwards. “This was ready-to-wear that is really ready to go straight to the store. It doesn’t have the extraordinary statement or imagination of Galliano but it’s really well done of Bill Gaytten to keep the ship together – and they are arguably incredibly pretty clothes that people will want to buy.”
The show notes informed us that this was a collection inspired by Mary Pickford and Mary Poppins, and, while it stayed true to the signatures of the house, at times the quality was lacking – a bias cut dress didn’t quite make the perfectly cut grade, a pink chiffon cocktail dress was too cutesy pink, the stitching too obvious and the shiny plastic corsage just too cartoony a reference. It lacked the Galliano lightness of touch and expertise - but it’s difficult to see how it could do anything else as the first collection presented in his name without him there.
The question remains as to whether Gaytten was the Sarah Burton to Galliano’s McQueen at the house – was he the safer, more sensible commercial mind reining in wild, expensive and all too eccentric ideas to keep the business afloat and dresses affordable (at least to some)?
While Burton’s work maintains the quality at McQueen but infuses it with her own, subtly different aesthetic, Gaytten still hasn’t – understandably – decided whether he’s playing himself or simply a lesser version of the original. It may be that Galliano’s perfectionism is lost along with his eccentricity and showmanship and, if that’s the case, then Gaytten can allow himself a freer rein to be himself and find his own raison d’etre at the house.
Credit where it’s due – with nobody standing up yet to take the job at Dior, it’s a brave move to step into the shoes of one of the world’s most famous – now infamous – designers in his own house, and the resounding applause for Gaytten after today’s show proved that an industry still reeling from the Galliano story, is ready to show its support.
SEE THE JOHN GALLIANO SHOW ARCHIVE