Galliano’s design approach is deeply rooted in history—the French Empire, the Belle Époque, the 1920s; treats women solely as objects of desire, focusing on “the waist, the hips, the bosom,” he once explained; and is very costume-y.
Well, well, well.
In response to the Style Files newsletter this week on Sarah Burton’s move to Givenchy, tips have poured in about who’s going where in the latest round of designer musical chairs.
And some of them, if true, will knock you off your chair.
First, as Lauren Sherman reported over at Puck, and I have since independently heard, it seems that Chanel has whittled the selection of its next designer down to three White men: Simon Porte Jacquemus, who I noted here last summer, thanks—hilariously—to a tweet by a spy across the courtyard from the Chanel Atelier, is apparently the frontrunner; the American designer Thom Browne, who has been showing a lot in Paris in recent years, and is the subject of an upcoming documentary by award-winning German director Reiner Holzemer, premiering this fall; and Pieter Mulier, who is currently at Alaïa, which is owned by LVMH competitor Richemont.
Why are there no women being considered for the job at a house founded by the most forthright and trailblazing woman in the history of fashion?
Maddening, that. And sooooo culturally tone-deaf.
But then, despite the handful of noise-making diversity C-suite hires here and there, luxury fashion is still predominantly owned and run by old White men. Modern, fashion is not.
The most intriguing gossip I’ve heard this week, however, is about John Galliano, which everyone in the Paris fashion community assumes is leaving Maison Margiela after ten years of what now appears to have been a stint in a halfway house: Go to the indie brand, keep your head down and nose clean, and eventually we’ll let you back into the mainstream.
About six months ago, I’d heard that Galliano, who is 63—yes, another old White man, who qualifies for retirement benefits in France—was talking to LVMH about returning to the group. One possibility was to his namesake brand, which he founded upon graduating from Central Saint Martins in the mid-1980s. He sold the company to LVMH when he went to work for the group in the mid-1990s, in the face of warnings that he could get pushed out of it someday, like other designers had been—notably Hervé Leger, Inès de la Fressange, and, of course, Hubert de Givenchy—and lose control of his name.
Alexander McQueen had been wary of doing that.
As I wrote in Gods and Kings:
For the four years that McQueen had been at Givenchy, he said that Arnault and his men “had been hounding me about buying McQueen.” He always turned them down. “I didn’t like the way LVMH ran Givenchy, so I wasn’t going to let them into my company.”
But Galliano was less cautious, let LVMH into his company, and, sure enough, when he was fired from Dior in 2011 for his anti-Semitic outbursts in a Paris cafe, he was also ousted from the John Galliano brand. It’s been run by his longtime tailor, Bill Gaytten, ever since, and barely has a presence in fashion—like it’s on life support.
There’s also been speculation that Galliano would go back to Givenchy, where he got his big LVMH break—but now, as we know, that’s Sarah Burton’s new job—or to Chanel, or even back to Dior. News, no doubt, to the venerable couture house’s current creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri.
But this week, I heard a whisper that Galliano might take over another brand that, if true, would be the fashion equivalent of the Shot Heard Round the World.