A Well Dressed Elephant In The Room

by Alison Hay

I’ve just read yet another of many articles on how the pressure of the fashion industry will have contributed to the downfall of John Galliano.

While it is indisputable that heading a company that scores billions a year carries a huge amount of pressure, and that onus is typically all upon the shoulders of one person who is a creative being at heart, it’s not the whole story.

True that fashion is a rarefied field that not only encourages, but also exalts Diva behaviour as ‘genius’. Couture is the frontispiece for a brand, that few can afford, but its job is to garner publicity, advertising a lifestyle and image for the real cash cows, the perfumes and sunglasses within reach of the lowliest who want to buy into the glamour they see in the newspapers, to own a bit of Dior, or Burberry, whatever it is. Therefore, the head of couture must do what he sees fit to grab that over saturated market share of attention. This week saw a man dressed as a shrub on the catwalks.

Galliano had his track record of doing so; employing male strippers who lap danced his collection on the most well clad laps in the land, dressing models in faux homeless looks in shredded newsprint and dangling pots and pans – his prize was protesters outside Dior headquarters and more, more publicity. It was his job to shock. He did it within the box that he was urged to flourish in.

I’ve just seen a collection of the new season of advertising campaigns for the largest fashion houses; Prada, Burberry, D&G, Versace…the photographs produced are the work of an extremely select cartel of photographers – mainly Testino and Meisel. They are the usual rounds of sullen, emaciated teenagers representing the rest of the world, in so-what clothes of mind jarring colour combinations set against a vaguely interesting backdrop and I remember thinking, all that budget and that’s the best they can do? Atmospherically lit and with poses just odd enough to catch the eye for 1.2 seconds but for the best in the photography world to come up with such uniformly predictable fare surprised me a little. It seemed as if they had been set some fairly safe parameters. I’m not asking to be shocked – most of us are beyond that these days with such a barrage of media at our fingertips, just creatively engaged a tiny bit, but these are multi-national brands that manicure and closely protect their images, obliged to project an other-worldliness drenched in expense, but not so far out of touch with the matrons of Beverly Hills and Fifth Avenue that they couldn’t achieve it themselves given the same resources.

Anyway, so there is the very fine line – stay in the boundaries but jar just enough to get an edge and a head start over everything else out there. This is the Golden Rule.

In addition to this careful cultivation of attention grabbing is the fashion world itself.
For a little while, I had a bird’s eye view of the melee that surrounds the granddaddy of them all, Paris Fashion Week and was privy to front row seats and backstage backbiting. Actually, anyone can be if they have ever seen Isaac Mizrahi’s ‘Unzipped’ or any number of documentaries on subjects such as Valentino, Lagerfeld and Vogue chronicling this mad world.  People will go to desperate lengths to be seen, to clutch a part of this perceived magic. In the eye of the hurricane is the designer himself, treated like a God, revered, adored, with every word uttered immortalized and feted. It really is as ridiculous as you could possibly imagine and as true as any spoof has portrayed in a light of messianic megalomania catered to by an army of sycophants. Anyone who survives more than a few years in this unreality surely has to have such an altered perception of the real world that they couldn’t hope to be back in it and survive.

Let’s say you get up on a Monday morning and shamble in to work and announce to your minions, who breathlessly await the next pearl to drop from your lips, “Today is all about tea leaves," after which you have a little lie down on a silk brocade chaise formerly belonging to Louis the something while brought your own designer label champagne and your phalanx of assistants, after chorusing, Yes! Yes! He is Genius! scurry off to bring you designs based on the leaf itself, the texture of the veins on a leaf, garments made from actual leaves, fabrics dyed in the world’s rarest tea and a collection based on the loosely wound rags of people who pick tea for a living in the mountains of India which will retail for around the same price as it would take to house and feed the tea workers of India for a decade. You must be a God. And Gods are not required to behave as mortals or be troubled by the opinions of peasants who are certainly not dirt beneath their feet as what is beneath their feet are rose petals from buds specially selected in the regions of Grasse from blooms named after themselves, in delicately cultivated shades that match the £5000 a metre, hand embroidered, dip dyed curtains in their bedrooms.

This is not good for a person.

The elephant in the room, as far as Galliano is concerned, is his homosexuality. No one dares address it but I think it is the key to his current troubles. While it is hardly out of the ordinary for a Couturier to be gay, getting to the top of this coveted field often takes decades of increments by inches until one is entrusted with the reins of a precious brand, that steamroller of money and industry that is cosseted and protected. Many of Galliano’s contemporaries have been at it for a long time; Lagerfeld, Valentino, Armani, Mugler and the late Saint Laurent. They came from a different generation, one whose social mores had discretion about sexuality even in such an open and acceptingly rewarding industry. They are mindful of the myth and controlling of their image in obsessive ways that border on psychopathic compulsion.

Valentino clearly feels that even his yacht owning has to speak of the lifestyle he projects as his brand. Lagerfeld has such a conceit for perfection that he is never seen without his enormous sunglasses, collars so high they look as if they are about to strangle him for hiding his aging crepe neck and incongruous driving gloves to conceal his liver-spotted old claws.  Newsflash, Karl; we suspect you are old and wrinkly. Put something comfortable on.

Galliano, in contrast, had a relatively meteoric rise to grandeur, going from sleeping on park benches to being found backers by Anna Wintour and launching his first collection in a matter of months. He was the latest Enfant Terrible and like McQueen, untrained to withstand what it takes to BE the brand when taken on by Givenchy and then Dior.

But Galliano did not do his growing up as a tailor’s apprentice or work his way through one of the great Houses. He did his growing up in the London club scene. As any of you know who have been a part of this milieu, London queens are about as tough as it gets. When it comes to being bitchy, one has to be more than just on one’s toes to get the best of them verbally, and it becomes a way of life, a way of thinking. The put down and the insult have no boundaries as long as your target is crushed and your audience is appeased. Born out of insecurity, of which Galliano had a great deal having been mercilessly bullied at school, it becomes a weapon and way to fight back, a club to finally belong to when you have spent a difficult  lifetime defending who you are. Then it becomes a habit that you are lauded for, the verbal whiplash that you are so practised at that you gain your own notoriety and coterie of acolytes.

Often it is said that Galliano couldn’t possibly be anti-Semitic, being of Jewish and Gypsy descent himself and that is a reasonable assumption, as too is the notion that a gay man would be abhorrent at Hitler, being undoubtedly aware that Hitler treated homosexuals with no more reverence than the millions of Jews he ordered to be gassed.

This is beside the point.

A good example of irreverence towards heritage would be a London socialite at the top of the tree who, when a launch invitation came through the post with instruction to ‘dress provocatively’ came accompanied by two Nazi Bikers – and he was Jewish. He did it knowing he was untouchable morally, being famously Jewish himself and because it caused the hoped for stir. Notwithstanding that the English have a history of thumbing noses at being politically correct, as Galliano would be familiar with and have used many times to his own and his brand’s advantage, the subject matter was unimportant – the shock was all that mattered, as a device for getting attention and remaining among the elite who refuse to follow convention and carve a career and a fortune out of doing so.

Galliano was merely looking for the easiest root to shock and insult. To a man used to years of being offensive in the name of sport, which is frequently dressed as wit in gay circles, it was just a short cut to belittling someone he regarded as unworthy of his ideals and lifestyle. He was the product of a habit and most of his life had been applauded for being as scathing as possible.

His error in judgement, which was clearly clouded by rampant addiction, was visiting that mindset upon someone who was not cowed by his glory or desperate to be included in the world of Couture and now he is paying a hefty price for that, snubbed by the industry that encouraged him to be a God and shock for a living but, you know, only a little bit.