Valley of the Sex Dolls

Fashion veteran John Galliano still has a wild imagination. But does he have the goods?

The rehabilitation of designer John Galliano—a long-conceived, multi-step plan, executed methodically by a host of fashion powers who will benefit greatly from 63-year-old’s return to centerstage—is reaching its apex, with his Maison Margiela Spring/Summer 2024 Artisanal show last month that the fashion tribe can’t stop chattering about, and Academy Award-winning director Kevin Macdonald’s documentary, High & Low—John Galliano, which I have seen, coming to cinemas on March 8. I’ll weigh in on the film closer to its release date. 

Maison Margiela Spring/Summer 2024 Artisanal show.

The show, which kicked off Galliano’s tenth year at Margiela, was staged in an old-time nightlife space under the Pont Alexandre III, and featured Boldini-esque models cavorting in tightly-cinched corsets, latex, and transparent organza, like Edwardian blow-up sex dolls.

There’d been a years-long drought of Galliano-style pageantry, and pleasure-starved fashion followers were thankful—swooning—that he’d brought it back to the runway.

Galliano said he was inspired by Hungarian-born photographer Brassaï’s pictures of French prostitutes, barkeeps, and café customers in the 1930s. Those now-classic images, published in Brassaï’s book, The Secret Paris of the 30’s, have been endlessly influential on fashion culture—Helmut Newton told me that Brassaï “was a true hero of mine since I was a kid,” which is easy to see in his work; Steven Meisel and Arthur Elgort clearly had it in mind for Vogue stories they set in Paris cafes; and Galliano admitted to heavily mining the book in the late 1980s for his “Hairclips” collection.

Brassaï and Newton.

As someone who has covered Galliano’s career since the early 1990s, and as the author of the double biography Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, I have thoughts.