John Galliano, Couturier.

Head designer of Christian Dior, John Galliano has taken the "Dior look" to a whole new modern level. Ever since his first collection at Saint Martins College in London 1984, he was then noticed by Bernard Arnault of LVMH who signed him to be head designer at Christian Dior in 1996 after producing top quality collections. His first couture show for Dior coincided with the label's 50th anniversary, on January 20, 1997. Galliano's inspiration come from his personal discoveries through art, travel, and theatre, "My role is to seduce...", he once said, after recreating some of Dior's period clothing for Madonna in the film Evita, which was given special attention in the tabloids. According to style.com, John Galliano is a man with a prodigious flair for the theatrical, clearly, and his runway tableaux are often likened to performance art... Galliano is currently expanding his own personal line by adding accessories, sportswear, and children's clothing to his line. Each year Galliano creates six couture and ready-to-wear collections a year for both his own line, and Dior's. By earning the title 'The king of couture', Galliano dedicates his time to each collection in a short period of time, adding every small detail into each garment. Galliano currently succeeds to reach higher goals in his life and his career to gain high reputations in the press and around the world.

From 2001 to now, John Galliano has shown such progress in his work through his couture collections at Christian Dior. Each show is something so different people wonder how a man can think of something so extraordinary every time. Every fashion week in Paris or New York, the crowd desperately waits to see what Galliano has in store for them. But one year in particular that blew everyone away was 2004, when Galliano amazed the press and even celebrities, especially Sarah Jessica Parker who sat in the front row at the Spring show, "Why isn't everybody jumping up and down and screaming? I knew Galliano was capable of elegance, whimsy, fantasy and history, but this was beyond fantastic; beyond belief. I have never seen anything like it in my life.". Galliano took his inspiration from his journey to Egypt, using leopard-print fur stoles with collars that "soar like obelisks", billowing gowns of shadow-dyed organza, with hems twisted and folded into lotus flower shapes, and pyramid-shaped gowns made of dozens of golden mirrors, and printed with hieroglyphics, or the glamorous mummies paraded in bandages of black silk tulle flashing with rainbow sequins. Many wore Nefertiti like crowns, or long Egyptian "goatees". Some of the more brilliant examples of flawless tailoring was shown in the golden or blue snake skin sheaths, worn by models. These models wore elegantly carved and polished wood masks, of Tutankhamen, or gods like Horus, a falcon, Bast, a cat, or most brilliantly, Anubis, a jackal. The masks were made by London milliner Stephen Jones. It was one collection that was favorited out of many collections. 

  

Christian Dior Spring 2004 Couture, 

Erin O'Connor (top) & Liya Kebede (bottom)

Later that fall/winter, Galliano amazed the audience again with his final collection for Dior in Paris. He got his inspiration from from his research trip to Italy, "I went on a research trip to Vienna, and then got to looking at Egon Schiele, and Empress Sisi, and Russia!" was John Galliano's brief explanation of the collection. The show took a lot of effort for Galliano, especially the couture models who had to 'work the runway' by wearing heavy layers of thick fabric, wide gowns with high platform shoes, swagging there hips to the sound of Lil Richard's music. Everything in this show was beyond beautiful, the makeup-artistry, the music, and even the accessories (mini clutch bags and diamonds). Galliano can sure think of some crazy ideas in such a short period of time, he made the collection very fun and playful by taking something historic from the Edwardian period and made it very young and sexy. On the other hand, it was also essentially a show of one queenly, repeated 28 times. And that, for Galliano, displayed an odd lack of variety. Gwen Stefani actually purchased one or two garments from this collection for her Alice in Wonderland inspired music video, 'What you waiting for?'. 

Christian Dior Fall 2004 Couture.

This was one of many amazing collections from John Galliano for Christian Dior, but this year in particular was considered the major break through for Galliano showing his best work ever with mind blowing theatrics and artistry! For more information on John Galliano and his collections, click here.