The Fashion BusinessMy own purpose in this chapter, in juxtaposing images over a hundred
years apart, is neither to pinpoint superficial stylistic similarities for their
own sake, nor to make facile fin-de-siècle comparisons but, rather, to situate
both sets of imagery within the context and tradition of modernity. In
particular, I wonder whether it is possible to ‘activate’ the excess and opulence
of nineteenth-century Parisian consumer culture by ‘injecting’ it with the
excess and opulence of Galliano’s contemporary designs. Both are visually
similar, and both are dominated by the idea of woman as spectacle. Yet the
considerable differences between their historical contexts suggest that the
term ‘modernity’ might no longer apply to both, and that Galliano’s designs
should be analysed in the context of ‘postmodernity’. Insofar as both moments
encapsulate rapid technological change and social instability, parallels can
be drawn; yet there are fundamental differences in the type of change and
instability between both periods which also differentiate the effects of one
from the other. Thus contemporary fashion is on the edge – of centuries, and
of its own margins. Janus-headed, it looks simultaneously back (with
nostalgia) and forward (with anxiety). Galliano is one of the former tendency
whose work brilliantly sums up its paradoxes and contradictions; as such,
his work is a significant marker of a wider cultural trend.
Galliano: 1990sFigure 9.1 shows a moment in the Christian Dior Autumn-Winter 1998/9
couture collection designed by John Galliano. Entitled ‘A Voyage on the
Diorient Express, or the Story of the Princess Pocahontas’, it was shown in
the Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris, where the models arrived on a steam train
while the audience were seated on sand-covered platforms decorated with
huge bronze platters of spices to look like an oriental spice market or souk.
As the visitors sat surrounded by canopies, potted palms, antique Louis
Vuitton suitcases and Moroccan lanterns, consuming champagne and Turkish
delight, the train chuffed into the station and a model dressed as the Princess
Pocahontas burst through a wall of orange paper at the front of the train.
Only then did the train come to a halt and disgorge its cargo of models,
dressed in a jumble of native American and sixteenth-century European dress.
The presentation and the majority of the garments were pure spectacle, such
that the consequent press coverage was in fact rather critical of the designer
for having substituted showmanship and pantomime for fashion design itself.^3
- For example, see Susannah Frankel, ‘Galliano Steams Ahead with Any Old Irony’,
Guardian, 21 July 1998, pp. 10.