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Going Dutch. A phrase laced with frugality: "I’ll buy my burger, you buy yours." But John Galliano isn’t any old Joe at the diner. Rather, he is a master deconstructionist who can impose his way on a concept as remarkably as on a piece of cloth. The Dior couture collection he showed Monday offered a dazzling case in point. Galliano worked from an apparently limitless budget for a lineup rooted in New Look extravagance yet inspired by the Dutch Masters, from whom he pilfered a rich Vermeer palette (set against plenty of white), a stately "sittings posture" and gracefully flamboyant portrait chapeaux. The result was a fusion of indulgence with control, the frugality apparent in the exacting execution — no errant froth nor trailing appendages here. Rather, he placed every rosette, every ribbon, every crystal — and there were many — to just-so perfection.
He did so unapologetically. "Of course I’m sensitive to the economy. Of course I’m aware of it. I read the newspapers; I watch TV," he said Sunday. "But [dealing with it] is not my job. My job is to do the best I can to show the possibilities of Dior. When you’re standing in a hurricane, you have to keep your feet firmly on the ground. If you panic, whew…you fly away."
Thus, Galliano’s notion of being grounded: a collection rooted in the parallel beliefs that Dior must not surrender its identity to recession, but that now is not the time to go iconoclast-crazy. He thus celebrated the house iconography in all its 1947 audacity. Along the way, he sometimes turned his tight jacket and bodice inside out in homage to Dior’s founder. "I really studied the constructions and discovered his soul," Galliano said. "I could read his decisions."
By day (a word used loosely here), that often meant lady-fied suits with full, stiffened skirts, one with four distinct ripples in the shape of a clover, others reined in closer toward the body. Collars were latticed and laced; sleeves pouffed and pintucked; pleats rolled with womanly power. Galliano also worked in some lovely dresses, such as a red satin strapless fastened to a multistrand pearl choker and a white guipure and wool shirred-bodice dress.
But this collection was really about high evening. First out: languid, linear beauties in embellished whites, each one an Oscar nominee. Yet would that movie stars and their stylists throw caution to the wind and go for a more ample silhouette, as Galliano’s ball gowns are far too breathtaking to come to rarefied reality only on filthy-rich brides from faraway lands whom most of us will never see. These wonders came bustled, festooned, laced or swirled into multiple layers. One, its skirt rippling with 2,500 meters of tightly packed lace ribbon, was cut away to reveal crisp-yet-elaborate blue Delft embroidery inside. Just one example of a Dutch masterpiece.
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