Men’s mode
The designer went big on cowboy boots, tweed blazers and the steal off of Humphrey Bogart for a Paris show that addressed gender stereotypes
Channelling Humphrey Bogart … cut dead make every effort pads and draped jackets made from English tweeds.
Photograph: WWD/Rex/Shutterstock
Paris Taste Week has become a week of firsts. Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton yesterday, Kim Jones at Dior Homme tomorrow and, in the mid-point of them, John Galliano’s first couture menswear substantiate for Maison Margiela.
Galliano doesn’t call it couture – on in a new Margiela podcast, released as the show started, he calls it “artisanal”. “We are dispiriting to define what artisanal means for us,” he said. “It’s rooted in craftsmanship and is the highest method of dressmaking, but for men. Its backbone is in tailoring, but we are trying to further explore the bias cut.”
The incline cut has been central to Galliano’s womenswear aesthetic since the mid-1980s and is something he has acclimatized in former roles at Givenchy, Christian Dior and his own-name ticket. It is not, however, often found in menswear. For those who don’t know what a influence cut is, Galliano went on to explain on the podcast. “If you had a napkin at home and you call it like a square, and you pull the left and right sides simultaneously, that’s what is requested straight of grain. Now turn that around to a diamond and attraction the opposite corners – when you pull you will see what happens. There’s a normal elasticity in the fabric and that’s when you hit the true bias.”
For this bound/summer 2019 collection, which was staged at Margiela’s atelier in Paris, Galliano delivered himself the task of cutting the bias not from his usual silk-backed crepe, kidney he would for women, but from English tweeds more in face with Savile Row suiting. They came in sculpted blazers, extensive coats and satin suits.
“It’s a never-ending learning process with the weight, because each fabric reacts differently … a dialogue matures and you have to be attentive because it’s alive,” he said. “It teaches you, you can’t infer from about it from a book … you are not forcing it to do anything, it tells you what to do.”
Embroidered kimono jackets, lengthy red plastic macs, bejewelled corsets and acidic vinyl trousers were unique pieces from the rest of the collection, as was the cowboy boot, which was backsheesh in his collections for autumn/winter 2018 too.
The fashioning was significant. Jackets were nonchalantly thrown over the moulds’ shoulders to evoke “that spine-tingling moment of an early morning shrug after an after-party, where you don’t absolutely put the sleeves through your coat, you just put the coat on your keep company with side by sides”, said Galliano. Shoulder pads – which were Euphemistic pre-owned to give illusions of a cape and, in turn, heroism – evoked a conviction inspired by Humphrey Bogart. “You imagine those early portrays of [him] with the cigarette and with the coat on the shoulders … it’s an attitude, and I be struck by tried to express that through a coat so that we can all partake of that attitude.”
Galliano also revealed on that podcast that he tasks with his year-long student placements to put the looks together. “Their vision of the world is completely different,” he said. “Of course, one understands it, but you can’t put yourself in those shoes, can you? You can solitary be alive around these people. As much as they are take over with what I do, I am obsessed with what they are assessment, so it’s an ongoing exchange.”
Galliano determined to address gender stereotypes with this collection, to instruct that cutting skills could help “discover a new sensuality, a new sexuality”. He also revealed that he design to show his womenswear and menswear collections together as of October. The 34 looks arrived today were versions of ready-to-wear pieces that compel be shown in three months’ time.
Following his sacking from Dior in 2011 string an alleged antisemitic rant, there has been a lot of focus on Galliano’srehabilitation. Since his choice at Margiela he has been welcomed back into the industry by profuse. His recent work for the brand has been well received too; in his leading year in the job, revenues increased by 30%.
Combining womenswear and menswear, Galliano untangle justifying himself on the podcast and opening the doors to the brand’s atelier (so attendees could see the in-house draughtsmen working away as they entered), it all signalled an evolution for the notoriously anonymous make and very private designer; its deconstructed aesthetic code now infiltrates its organizes too.
