John Galliano at the Vogue Festival | Vogue Festival 2015 | British Vogue

I invited John to talk to us at last year's festival but he wanted to wait until he had something new to talk about I asked him again to come to this year's festival expecting the answer no but I'm delighted to say that he has accepted specifically to talk to us about the Couture please welcome John Galliano so we we've made a big effort for John to feel at home surrounded by little he has creations and even your favorite peonies here so I hope it's being liked Rick um when John did you first realize you were interested in fashion or was there never that moment you were always so keen on fashion that you never had that know and I showed a natural talent for drawing but really I didn't discover fashion till much later wrong I think it was in the I discovered my love of design through illustration so I was already well into the course of st. Martin's run back in 1983 and I graduated in 84 so that's really when I discovered that I loved creating but when you went to some Martin's were you not already keen on fashion um not particularly when I went that I applied to the foundation reporter to help me decide I mean I did have a logistic man yeah I just don't know what to specializing I didn't know much about it either and so I went to war since grammar school for boys first through all the boys things and then I went on to further education College sit in East London to study languages Spanish and French and there is a subsidiary was an art class and and it was there that I started to draw on life studies and my tutors there then the encouragement to prepare a folio to apply to st. Martin's the foundation course oh that's amazing I had no idea that um so when you went to some Martin's what did you what did you expect and hope of that experience having moved there from from where you'd be it met all my expectations and um suddenly I was surrounded by like-minded people and so creative and done you know I'd come from an all-boys schools those girls boys really cool people and yes I'd let my hair down and you were able presumably sort of for the first time to really let your imagination become the kind of dominant creative force it was it was really encouraged at that time so Martin's was like a traditional art school and see you were encouraged to move amongst the in the film Department with graphic artists photography sculpture Department it was very open so you were encouraged to move around in those different fields which I found on a fantastic way to start and that was in the 80s wasn't it so actually you were in a time where there was sort of this incredible vibrant sort of music club street style thing going on which must have meant that actually as a young designer there was there was a lot that you could take part in um yeah a lot of it happened in a club called taboo in a display and but it is true the spotlight was on London the American buyers will come into London yeah John Mabry was making incredible films there was Boy George um saved a whole of the body map crew it was an incredibly creative period sort of blitz kids um yeah to boot came a little bit after blitz right heads but um it was that loud where we were very individual and we expressed ourselves yeah and ready if Thursday no Tuesday night and Saturday for Thursday 48 um makeup hair makeup session it was never love done did you find having that formal fashion education meant that you actually met people who are helpful to you I mean with that when you want to actually start your own label did that make a difference to you that you'd that you'd spent that time with people rather than trying to do it without some art ins so Martin's was a great place to go to and to express my creativity today it's a very different School where they do prepare you a little bit I mean back then there was it was called a business game and it was like you know the two last days of your degree so I think many people care I was it for business yeah but I like the hard way though had to learn to swim so I wouldn't say at that point it did prepare me for for the business side of things but um I had to learn very quickly and when I was in business I mean I graduated and then and he went straight into yeah thanks mrs. bursting from Browns I mean I graduated and the next day I will to my collection um up to UM South Molton Street where she invited me there and we created a window together and um and then my first client was Diana Ross no oh that's pretty cool yeah um by applicants yeah did she yeah did you ever see her wear it I I did and then I put well yeah many many years later I was at a party and she was performing and she brought it up she remembers I never think of sort of Diana Ross's the kind of Galliano girl somehow she wore an unquiet look at and um to some really quite large extent your vision of a fashion show has has sort of redefined the idea of fashion shows I mean I think you really were if not the first person definitely one of the first people that made the shows such a spectacle rather than literally a kind of moving sales room um how much do you feel that the dramatic is essential in a show um today I think a little bit of theater goes a long way back then I was obsessed um I just thought it was the perfect backdrop the foil for um the girls i was working with and you know we'd give them a narrative a story they'd understand what they were wearing sometimes they'd never worn clothes like that so to spend time with the girls in front of the mirror with a card yeah and they loved us be told you know you are they grounded form the direct yeah yes and it brought the clothes to life and you could see the details you could hear the rustle of silk it gave them a command of volume and space um which sometimes you don't get with the just kind of straight up and down and nowadays of course with the Instagram which I suspect you don't do but the you know the sort of social media thing I noticed for instance that the last arm set of collections that so many shows were really designed around that idea that everybody was going to be taking the photograph and so everyone was sort of it wasn't just about the clothes it was about a backdrop or something with that with that visual do you um do you think how are you going to deal with that that feeling of at the social media interpretation from the point of view of a show I mean it was quite amusing because when I saw the video I couldn't see the clothes because you know I've been out for four years and then I saw the playback of the show and it once all denied Oh fine you like what that wasn't there the last time I was doing shows um so yeah definitely change the camera angle it's my baby I embrace it I embrace it um when I can yes um I think it's important to to what to have a balance as with everything when I saw John and we were talking about way before this I was so inspired by what he talked about with kind of fabric and when he when he holds fabric he knows so much what he's doing with it so with this I'm so wearing in a fall of the stage um with this incredible out of here I mean how did this start John this incredible Rococo is is wonderful with a mother and child and well this was the wedding dress at the end of the of the collection and I had tried to sip I spent a lot of time trying to understand the work of mater but I didn't want to just recreate it but I kind of wanted to move on as as well so this was inspired by Maya but it's not taken from one of his it was actually a skirt he had done where he pulled the lining out split it down the seam center prong and put it on as a whole neck so I started to think and think I'm thinking I love it's actually a man's coat you're looking at oh where is that that's cheater she might if you want to take responsibility checkout you come this way okay thrills but cannot see it's actually a man's coat and then getting into Martin's work I can cut the back of the lining so when you do that you'll see a cut in there and this is actually all the lining of the coat which I've been draped thirds like an incredible high woman's kind of hidden and then here well this kind of symbolized um my return to Couture the marriage of JG and Mademoiselle it symbolizes many things things that had been collecting over the last four years from flea markets things that I kind of laughed and maybe before not being in the moment hadn't really noticed their beauty and trying to give them another life a new life there's a baby that's maybe a little icon there's real 40s and 30s jewelry that I use that I'd been collecting this is really good costume jewelry it's the real thing you can hardly find that anymore but something like this presumably I mean it's it is a one-off piece nobody you're not going to be able to recreate this for anybody else this exists really like a sculpture or a piece of art doesn't it I mean you could you will be able to recreate that apart with the coat and the fabric but not this whole it may be Oh a one-of-a-kind but as well as dressing the fabulous ladies that come to us for Couture MS La Jolla today the artisanal serves another purposes while which when I first went to mesmo July decided to concentrate I wanted to know what it felt like to wear modular today because mutton had not been there for some time the team had done an incredible job of course as you know the products so I spent a lot of time trying to understand how it would feel to wear modular today and and this was all part of the process and to establish a recognizable DNA for today like do yours hip jacket or Chanel's Camellia so I really wanted to play with this idea over the line um which then inspired nothing thing either that especially um which we showed him the ready to wow was quite a funky she's wonderful this come on and then taken that lining into a more wearable mr. Lang and okay so that's a proper way of developing isn't it from Cotuit that you started that lets you ready to into the wedding where and what it means is that you can you can wear a slip dress or a top and you can just throw your jacket back you don't have to wear the jacket all day so that I hope will be establishing people's psyche and they'll recognize my Jenna from 50 meters away and over here um seashells yes yes I'm just really intrigued about this kind of breastplate because presumably a lot of this is the artisanal idea is it's things that you've found yeah I mean the idea that one has found these pieces and added them when I started to collect see styles and really admire them their beauty and then I was inspired by art and bold with the artist and recreated these quite grotesque faces but this was my offer of embroidery today and why not it's recycled it's a beautiful thing and I'm giving it another life so that some seashells I collected in Los Angeles in Normandy my assistants mother was cooking a lot of muscles and we used those as well and then I wanted to obliterate any sense of what it came from which is why we've done this almost like Jeff Koons finish on it um yeah it's my it was my this collection was called intentions so it was my proposal of the kind of embroidery I would do at Maison Gela here's another thing that I wanted to establish was this almost like trompe l'oeil I was like slim sleeve with this almost eighteenth-century calf but it's part of the pocket so you just get that look but it's very practical you can just go around your everyday life and a beautiful red coat seashells on the front I read the other day that um raker Kubo is said about red being the most dangerous color do you what what do you feel about red having used it Rajan this with with this collection um um because time was limited which was a great thing in a way it helped me re-evaluate it color and how I wanted to use color so there was black and then there was the color of the Stockman that a.cian color that you see on the wooden who pays and then the red I used more as a ray of light I use the red as as a shaft of light yes its dominant and all those other things are absolutely right but in this collection I used it as a light um and just while we're standing up here this incredible twelve yes well for quite some through this well it's the same um dress as the wedding dress but it's so we call it work in progress it's the twelve and we produce many to hours even to get to this stage and I just thought it would be really cool and berry Maison Margiela to actually show the toile so you saw the whole collection first and then I sent the girls out in the same outfit at a frozen moment of creation and some of them have got like post-its and numbers and I wanted Indian takeaway that night all sorts of things that show that creative process and I just was very honest so intricate there because at while one thinks of as something really quite simple that you then make into the ornate thing but these are there was a to work yeah like to work out and I love the the painting the wife does that order yeah that's so grab some numbers on it yeah and tris it down again please Oh so from from that first couture collection and having had now I forget how long it is but not terribly long to think about a banana six months I think yeah well very very little time then to think about it um what have you identified as sort of the some key qualities that you feel your Margiela will be um I love the place where I'm working as an amazing soul in that incredible house yes yeah um yeah I used to be a convent and then it's converted to an industrial denied a design school and now we're there it has an amazing soul and I I love exploring the deeply original DNA that Madame lay down I also had amazing good fortune to meet Madtown um which was an amazing experience I'll just say that much um but really energized me and I thought really good that yeah and the how much time are you actually spending there are you to go there every day all I do because it's early days but I love I love being there um I do get some phone calls to remind me to leave balance yeah I mean it's early days so I'm trying I work in a paramedical way where I'm trying to establish certain things with the artisanal we could say it's the path farm of the industry which then informs and inspires the ready to Wow which would be the order to and then the accessories the shoes the bags etc etc but it's there where I am have the time and resources to establish a line and a fashion direction but then the whole house can be inspired by I mean obviously you're used after having been Siobhan she and Dior to taking on houses that had a arm you know an identifiable designer and actually of course they were people who physically one had an image of with you know with Martin Margiela but is that something I mean do you feel quite comfortable about that this time around this time around I I do because also I had decided that although one must respect the the DNA of the house and the heritage I didn't want to become a slave to it which is what happened at Dior I kind of pushed myself in a corner and it was all about the bar jacket and right or even at Galliano it was all about the buyers cards I did actually do a lot of other things so this time I said I intentionally need to rectify that which i think is important it's important to understand the DNA but also to move on I think people want you yeah um the ready-to-wear you know show is sort of wonderful I mean you had things that of course you could see what was Margiela about it but also little bits that you just felt what it does completely new but they related it wasn't out of place but they were different yeah and and you're right dangerous you you get um sort of hampered by pastiche isn't it you can do and and when you're doing Couture and you're doing actually a dress for somebody you know tired something that is going to work I mean do you enjoy the process of actually working with them that sort of subtle fuel very much so yeah I love a wedding dress and I working with actresses is amazing too because they bring so much creativity to the session if you like yeah and sometimes it's very amusing very amusing and they probably give you ideas on a lot of things you could do that you haven't especially some of the very grand ladies I dressed in in Paris and they would tell me the satin underwear that they wore under the bias-cut dresses and how they would do the suspenders it was never done on the outside but on the inside yes so you never had a line so little things like that these ladies were just tell I mean I would just laugh it up I read about those things um great ladies Martin Margiela Aetna has has made um sort of the part of his identity I suppose being invisible in a way um and and over the years you've been one of the most visible designers how visible do you think you're going to be in this new role are you going to take on any of his kind of invisible man element it's very interesting the Invisible Man element and you know I'm just going to take it day by day um I did make an appearance in London when we presented the in my intentions collection but really I wanted to thank everyone for their support everyone that had come to see the show like I did to where I disappeared I well I just I wanted to put the spotlight back on the clothes um you know absolutely that's what I had decided to do anyway in the four years that I've been out and it's part of the DNA of the house so um it just felt really comfortable to to be able to work like that and and to really put the focus back on the clothes and away from the other thing are you going to keep the white coat why don't you did like a white okay here I asked that arenít I did bring ours in the world um it's great the white coat I mean I you know um couturiers have worn it for many many yes cristóbal Balenciaga eve-san all wrong do you think that's that thing whereby removes any concern about your own clothes a white coat that it sort of Nick it gives you a dollar it does that it cleanse what special when you're in a fitting I'm you know outlooks I'm quite funky people and the way they turn up to to what sometimes you can't concentrate on the twirl so that helps another thing that happens is that you can you really notice their faces and what they're saying and and they express themselves through their shoes the kids the students love it because they say everyone's so nice to us because no one knows who's who if you're a CEO or commercial director or you know attached' oppressor everyone's treated very respectfully because of the white coat and I wear it all the time what do you feel is the future of our culture um I try to explained earlier the importance of odd culture artisanal and that inspires and informs all the other lines we need creativity to move forward because without creativity we just got no work and that is turns into a business big business which I have proof could you please tell us more on the creative process of designing Kate Moss's wedding dress which was recently on display at the V&A museum and his absolutely breathtaking was kate involved in that I imagine she was got very strong opinion are we being recorded no I mean it was just the most magical magical experience to work with Kate on on this dress and it's all done very undercover and very in secret and we did have friends houses and she'd come over to Paris where I'd come over to the country I would it keep it secret for ages it were it was just the most magical um you know Kate I mean that had a lot fun doing there's so much fun I mean there was about 20 dresses cuz we just didn't stop were above the mirror and draping fabric and she'd pour one away and it was just the most and at the time that I was doing it I was just reconnecting to all those who I didn't know those emotions I had kind of been put on the side for for a while so I'm Kate Kate is amazing she's an amazing person and an amazing friend and stuff buying me and I mean I can't imagine any other bride who would ask someone who'd just come out rehab to do that dress and profession I was kind of lost in the countryside well she did look ravishing in it but she could look ravishing in a bin bag it has to be so we try that is okay history has always played such a fundamental part in your couture collections not only at Dior but now also at Margiela if you could travel back to one moment in history when would that be and why I I guess the French Revolution not for the gory bits but Jenna coats the swag and the you know the bonds and the favellas bows and now you know racing across cobblestones and the frisian caps and Trikala the colored style style so yeah just so long as you weren't one of the one who being marched up to the guillotine yes or knitting well you could be a trick nut they won't take orders exactly do you spend any time in London I know you visit but I pop over yeah do you think the time you'll spend more time in London now with the Margiela just sort of because I didn't know to get the voice will see how in but I mean at the beginning I thought that I'd be great to set up a design studio here too just for me to reconnect with the energy in London and my roots and Martin's roots but because of a question of timing and contracts it had to happen in Harrison and it haven't quite fast but who knows for the future because we think of you as London you notice we was claiming as a London designer so I've never felt any different now um what do you think is the most necessary quality for an aspiring fashion designer this is from the audience passion I think you have to be passionate about this trade you have to be passionate and have strong belief in yourself and surround yourself with really strong people at the beginning that's really important I think but was I have lunch say no it's such a little word and oh and I'm so afraid to say before because I thought I would have be a week but now I realized it's actually a sign of strength so please just say no only take on what you feel you can do really well and do it your maximum the rest

Channel: British Vogue

Views: 243,708

Keywords: vogue, british vogue, vogue magazine, fashion, style, british style, british fashion, british, Vogue British (Magazine), Kate Moss (Celebrity), Haute Couture (Exhibition Subject), John Galliano (Fashion Designer), Interview, Festival, Fashion (Award-Winning Work), 2015, Vogue Festival, Alexandra Shulman, Editor, Rehab, wedding dress, Central St Martin's, empower, dance, dress, Margiela, Christian Dior, recovery, comeback, couture, John Galliano 2015

Id: en2SSRm5AHw

Length: 30min 26sec (1826 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2015