John Galliano In Conversation With Nick Knight On The Future Of Fashion

someone be there would i want to be sitting on the table i'm slightly happier here hi oh john's here hi john hello album cover for this very cool very station station young americans in my head all morning so ah we can do background as well wow [Music] music seems to play quite a big part in what you do one of the comments that we've that um we have on on one of our many recorded zoom calls is you were saying that you have different music for different parts of your process so when you're when you're cutting you have one music when you're fitting you have another music i just wondered if that's sort of something that um you could elaborate on a little bit because it was a little it was a little line that sort of dropped in one of our no it's um it's true i mean i recognize the power of music it can be uplifting it can level you out it can knock out exterior sounds sometimes so it is true depending on the mood i want to be in and it's not something i'm very conscious about it kind of happens i'll play certain pieces of music sometimes it's classical or piano which means i kind of feel good receptive but i don't have to hear the noises around me in a fitting sometimes i want to obliterate all noise and i just want to give the muse the energy so i can't think when that happens but what's happening is i'm creating an energy for the muse to express himself or herself um and that speaks volumes i just kind of watch and then sometimes the music will color help me acquire a vision um or set a mood which will affect both myself and the muse how they wear the clothes how the clothes move that's a fitting but when you see that then that makes me go the next step um a fault will jump out um much quicker in movement we take pictures during our fittings as well and i always kind of cross reference and with pictures we see um i mean at the end of the day we're designing in 360 and hope creating beautiful clothes so um music does play a a very large large part in in the creative process yeah because one of our references or one of your references that we've worked on this of course is is the blitz club and the blitz kids your romantics at all all that moment which were you just a little bit young for that john was that sort of you yeah you want no i did actually go to the blitz club um i had met princess julia um through a friend of mine maria who worked at mrs howie which was at the other end of longacre and i became the saturday boy at mrs howie and there was a great gather who did the windows janine and um she could see i had a kind of artistic vent and uh invited me to help do the windows and that's how we initially met julia i don't know princess tudor remembers that but i was the nice spanish boy um yeah and um so i did go to the blitz and i did own my own willy brown suit uh modern classics brown and blue with a yellow oak leaf embroidered on the collar um so yeah that was kind of well we all know politically what we were going through and all that suppression so it was a place to release it quite frankly it was the most hedonistic um place and the looks i mean the looks were just phenomenal i mean i hadn't become the jg we know today i was kind of learning and taking it all in but because some of these guys were um kind of two years ahead of me at school so they had it really refined and down to uh you know the looks were incredible and so inspiring along with the music music along with steve strange and all the characters that we've randomly sing i wonder if that sort of suppression of the time creates a sort of equal and opposite reaction so that you're sort of you know the more you suppress the more fantasy becomes important because it is such a fantastic moment that visually fantastic for sure that energy was something we've spoken about was something i wanted to tap into and for sure when you suppress it has to explode somewhere so yeah when your back's up against the wall and it was the thatcher years you uh you become your most creative but that energy is so particular and it felt so relevant as as well with us all being in lockdown and then confined yeah um it it i guess one was hang cream for that along with aspirational beauty um [Music] at least that's what i was feeling yeah and because i mean we should just re rewind a little bit i guess because for people i'm not quite um knowing how all this came about we should do a little bit of a recap um because you know it's obviously um it's an incredibly big step for yourself and for myself well to a show all the process um in such a complete way because you had you know yourself being recorded on zoom calls on webcams on people's phones on um gopros on especially every camera on drones flying over the building you know red cameras on the turbo camera it couldn't have been a more fully sort of you know moment feel intrusive or liberating which um well i kind of in my head i mean first of all nick yeah i was able to do it thanks to you because i trust you um and trusting you my team could see that i was in a good headspace and mentally in my head i was in a good space and of course they follow me blindly i mean so they felt that and so they supported me in everything i mean after i know i mean i say 48 hours but it took a bit longer at first it was fun and um yeah but for sure when a drone flies into the room i mean you drop everything hello um but they they very quickly um focused on the job at hand and the collection we had to produce part of that again was to do with trust nick i think um um it's uh the idea of being completely some filters transparent the idea that if we could capture this this this sense of hope that occurs during the creative process it just felt really the right time to do this um and yeah if we want to backtrack a bit i mean the idea um came around uh in the lockdown i i was abroad but i was traveling yeah and and then suddenly um the things became so serious and i tried to educate myself on what was going on and the more i did the more afraid i became and there were so many mixed messages because i was traveling i was getting the bbc news i was getting the french news i was getting cnn from america and all the different points of view along the the different timelines as each country was going through the most grave moments yeah and it was there that i was full of anguish and anxiety and um as i said the more i tried to educate myself the more anxious i became and then i kind of just reminded myself of the tools i've been given when i was in rehab which i used daily to get me through the day and just realizing that the situation would call for patience with a big p and that nothing was going to change until there was some kind of vaccine found and um accepting the situation and maybe accepting the fact that with the situation could come something new could come almost being forced um you know being brought to my needs the mercy of nature when even i sometimes when i'm not in the present i'm very independent and forget that i'm not independent from nature we are at one but we we do forget so suddenly we're brought to the mercy of nature yeah and it was i mean i'm sure everyone thought that too it was like whoa huge bells went off so sadness the the the the idea that fashion would never be the same um the feeling that fashion as i knew it or as i had presented it um would change would be different now when i got my head around that i kind of went through my morning period if you like um because you have to you you have to um you know whether it was a loss of identity or loss of the way of working the image that all these things running around one's head and also being aware of what was going on in the world and um a kind of calmness came into me and i embraced the situation and i thought this could be really interesting john the idea of creating a blueprint for a way of presenting the collection and the work that goes into it in a new way um became really appealing and the idea of messaging in a very transparent way you know i was for i was following dr fauci and he was the guy that was giving us the straight messages you know at the time and it kind of inspired me to to embrace this idea that somehow it would be a really cool moment to reinforce um everything we believe in at maison martial the ethics that everything that we believed in and that we could find a way of showing it our thoughts on sustainability regicla all the things that i do that come as natural as breathing yeah to us at mesa magella i thought this would be a really fantastic moment to illustrate this and then of course i thought of you well thank you i'm very very pleased and very very honored you thought of me um i mean i think that in a way it's sort of this new way of talking about your collection talking about the work you do showing that the process is so illuminating because of course i've known you for for some years now john and we worked together um lots of different projects so of course i know and i've had the the the uh privilege to come to the to the um uh to the atelier and have you explained the work to me um one of the conversations that we had a long many moons ago when we were working for dior was you sat me down in front of the vhs cassette of your show and said watch this and you talked me through it and hearing you explain what you did totally revolutionized my thinking about how to present fashion and really one of the first seeds of show studio um the idea of fashion film and also showing the process and the idea of that actually if you have somebody who's intelligent and passionate and knows their subject talking to you about it it's really engaging and fashion in some ways has perhaps suffered a little bit from the lack of those people um like you know who who know about this subject in such an amazing way but actually hearing you talk about it really illuminates it well you know if you it's a silly parallel but we talked a little bit about the planet if you look at how david attenborough talks about his subject he talks about you know and it might be the reproductive cycle of the stag beetle or whatever it is which in itself isn't necessarily the most gripping thing but when you hear that about it it's the passion isn't it the knowledge and the passion combined and that idea that for me i think comes across really well in this um you know hearing you talk and as i said i've you know i have had the the the joy the fun and the privilege of hearing you talk over the years a lot um but hearing you taller is i felt that you were so at ease we're talking like that felt totally natural i didn't feel any yeah we all put our best foot forward when we're in front of the cameras in a way um but sometimes just being who we are really who we are is the most beautiful thing and the most powerful thing and i think that that for me comes across as one of the very strong very strong parts of the film we've made is it's that you i know there's no there's no there's nothing you know sort of and it's not an expose it doesn't feel that in any way you're you're being forced into the light it's just you're naturally who you are yeah no i i i didn't feel forced at all um it just took a bit of getting used to the this very kind of quiet moment with the team the the creative process um but then it's kind of quite interesting because what one would consider slightly intrusive i i feel comes across it really is so but i see some of the footage it really is um makes you feel like you're not meant to be there there is this feeling of this voyeuristic feeling or the way it's recorded the sound and everything and that's kind of the feeling one had at the beginning um the the idea to explore the vocabulary of a thriller or a horror uh which was um real fun too but again that i if if you're watching it the adrenaline or the excitement or what it does to you physically it puts you in the same state almost as when you're on the hunt and you're doing your research and you know some days are great you find it there's a high you know a one door opens another another day is not so good so just the idea of playing with that grammar to represent the research and the process work was really exciting for me seeing as you were directing and advising on different ways of filming and recording and me being able to see the visuals in the fittings well of course it made me rethink how to fabric allocate some of the things um when i saw how things turned like from black to white and different colors and arms became blues it was like a revolution to me it was like such fun to to work so this whole digital thing um has been a huge learning curve for all of us outside the norms of creating a beautiful collection for a runway show um so it's it's kind of really pushed us i was very interested in that whether the process of doing this and doing it in the way that you chose we've chosen to do it change the design at all whether it's something that you felt actually had some influence because normally you're working towards people seeing everything on a catwalk so with all the parameters of that it's a 15 minute show people are walking up and down um on a very sort of linear fashion but of course you can expand the narrative in that now i wonder if that change the actual design process so do the close look different for any reason to do with how we're presenting it or how we made it i don't think the designs look different i work in 360. so even if it's on a runway i am concerned with how the clothes move and the back views and all those things how it feels to that i mean i just i do that but as i said the the actual swatching or the fabric allocations for sure um was greatly inspired by the footage or the way of recording that was that was coming in for sure you know i had the that kind of you know the marble statues inspired by rafael and montero in my head and this idea of producing a whacked look from head to toe so that concept was was all already um taking shape but the joy that something you may have missed with the excitement and the whole pla that surrounds a runway show and speed you know uh the muses you can actually really see on film that butter muslin is so stunning that honest honest butter muslin um was was was you could kind of feel it it was really tactile um the layers of the lint and the canvas and and the organzas i mean on film it's just so divine just the chiffon um floating in the air and how you were able to capture that and slo-mo it was just like something we don't register in in the real world no real time it's so fast everything i mean even if you are in the present but how many of us are on that kind of runway schedule how many are actually totally in the presence of these fleeting seconds moments and that that that you miss um but now thanks to you you're able to see it's like quite beautiful really you know an honest chiffon that we all take for granted but to actually see um why we would do a pin hem finish to to further enhance and liberate the fabric to do what it does it's that simple the technique um but you see it on film yeah it's always always a pleasure photographing your clothes and filming your clothes because they they evoke so many images so in a way i have a relationship with you a sort of artistic relationship with you um where you know we we find each other i think it's a sort of quite quite an interesting level where we look um because i know you socially a little and i've known you over the years socially little my most profound contact comes with you when we're actually working together when i'm trying to interpret what you've done trying to show you it back um try to make it the vision that perhaps you have in your head so i'm really trying to understand your process your thought process and your desires which of course is where the pleasure is for me so my relationship with you feels very special in that way because i've spent i don't know how long it is john i won't put yours on it but it's a while um trying to understand art trying to understand your your soul trying to understand your mind to be able to express it in the most beautiful and the most you know most complete way it's a very interesting relationship to have with somebody very nick very nick um i i have known um some people for 30 years and after being in arizona i realized how little that we knew about each other as opposed to people that i just spent like three months with where i'd been completely transparent we had shared and i i was like my god i know more about these guys than i do about my friends i've known for 30 years it wasn't that moment that created moment where i'm not sure you're channeling energy for sure you're giving so much energy because i can feel the energy around you it's alcohol it's i'm going to see a blue light around you um every twitch in your your body your muscle i mean someone needs to film you when you're at it i'm sure they have is like messaging that you're sending its energy energy what blows me away every time is i mean we may share and we may understand and i'm forever learning but there are moments that happen when you're working i don't think anyone has quite thought it would work like that all these creative energies like the shop with malik and how i mean did you really work it out where you know did it just happen it's a sort of spiritual moment and when i'm working often when we start off we start looking through the camera and we start setting up the lights it's you start on a journey and of course the beginning of the journey is without meaning to sound like i'm using a pun it's very pedestrian you know it's very sort of you you start and it's all a little bit kind of hard you're trying to find things and at a certain point you just take off and it becomes a metaphysical state it becomes a spiritual state um and that's what you're always aiming to do to get to the point where actually creation seems natural and not hard it's a connection and and that happens nick i think because there's a balance with your id your ego and your super ego and when that's balanced you're in a really good frame of mind and you're aware that that there is a greater power out there you might not be conscious of it but when you're at that level for sure you can receive energies and it's this creative process where it's the joy the connection um it's it just happens because we're all in the right place at the right time and the you can feel the crew i mean i in that studio you you could feel the energies from yourself the mute everyone everyone involved there was so much energy in that room the the yeah you saw the muses after i mean they were shaking they were like they'd given it up for you you know they'd felt it they they too had got lost in this make-believe world almost childlike wasn't it to pretend but and they were you know hannah's swimming on the floor well i was convinced she really was swimming you know and so were they they might you know um you know hannah losing it trying to get out of that beautiful apartment you had to vote was like an expression of what we're all feeling as well as a result of confinement different energies that were tapped into that needed to be released were released because of the trust on that shoot i've been because i know my babies i know how much they can do but i'm so proud of them you know at first i was a bit nervous i was like you know nick's very demanding it could go on for hours and just get ready for it you know so excited to work but i mean after they'd all done like their first shot yeah boom i mean i just stood back and i was like whoa look at these kids they're like they're connected man you created that space for them to feel the connection you created that your direction your constant direction and the trust it's the trust again isn't it it's it's magical it's magical um the only one i was a bit nervous of was scarlet because i hadn't really worked well she's brand new and i don't know if you remember i just thought i don't know how she's gonna take all this so i i asked her to come on set and just watch um some of the others yeah and um i think we were playing madame butterfly and i've seen she's never heard modern butterfly before she had no idea what this aria was about i knew it as i was watching it i i didn't i could just feel it i could just feel it um but her expression and how she just felt the music trusted you what she did was so breathtaking it was just magic it's magic me no it certainly is and i i think the thing that um that really touched me was was as you say how they were prepared to just open up and feel and there was no reserve there was no sort of shyness or or um i was incredibly impressed with with nikki um i mean incredible all of them but nikki's performance is is so powerful and so heartfelt you know you have a girl with demon and angel and all the tattoos she has do say something about her feelings and how she's been in life and everything else so there's there is you know that it's written on her but then she gave herself so much it's the one that reduced me to t reduced me to tears opened me up to tears yes um two mornings ago you know literally i it made me weep and that's something that it's sort of strange because of course i created the work and created the the film so i should have experienced that at the time but watching it back you it's it's a funny thing when we when we when we create we we're on a certain level but in a way you don't see everything you feel things we don't see it this is it's a feeling not a vision and i think that's something that people don't really understand that when you're you're really working we're not really doing in our sessions where we're totally giving everything we have to create something you're not seeing anything i don't mean you're blind but it's not the primary sciences you feel it here in your heart yes it's yeah feeling more than a vision is what i'm trying to say yeah you um i mean we speak of nikki who's um an incredible soul and um actually quite shy in a way and often when people work with her they'll make her look like a boy or encourage her to be more boyish and when she saw that dress she was like ah i'm going to look like a princess this is what was going through her mind me i don't know and the idea that she could model like a woman was i think so liberating for her and that we loved her being that too and tapping into that and that we totally loved that you saw i mean it was like okay nikki like okay nikki with them let's let's go out and get some because the energy was was yeah you could like it was amazing and um that was a beautiful thing to see um with the muses really very very beautiful um having worked with them so closely i kind of know a little their story as well so to see them through trust just and the creative process it's just um i did notice it i did notice it sometimes and i was glancing very carefully at the screen and things but just we have such a connection that i i could feel what was going on as well and like i said i'm so proud of them yeah they're my family they're my chosen family you know they're they are family what what you do and i know this partly because of my son callum who worked with you for a while at marjola um you introduce play into the process so i know that you have days where you take clothes that are down in the in the cellar in the carve and you try them on and you get the kids around you to put them on different ways inside out upside down messy half it's called but that's part of play and i think that's very although people slightly diminish it as a childish thing i think it's so important it's just a liberation to be able to role play try different things try different genders to be different people absolutely i mean a little bit more inspiring than the black page for sure and it is a voyage of discovery and i do encourage and how better you know you need to know the the fundamentals you can't build the house without the structure you know decorated with the wallpaper the curtains all later but we do need to understand the structure first and what better way than to try clothes on try them on inside out pull them apart deconstruct them rebuild them you know that children when we break down our our robots and our you know and then build them back together again it's an a very real way of of learning and experiencing and it's not just going to have 20 drawings on a white piece of paper inspired by um you don't have to draw anyway nick i mean you don't have to know how to draw or illustrate or make patterns and eventually you have to have an understanding of how to construct of course but you can express yourself through so many other mediums um it's the idea it's the concept it's the idea isn't it okay so it's not so fantastically made at the beginning doesn't matter it's getting that idea out there um that becomes a part of you a part of your vocabulary and you start building on that and building and learning it's never i'm still learning i'm still learning i mean you know a fabric will come in and i think i know everything that there is to know about the bias cut and then she starts to behave very differently and the dialogue begins you know depending on the weak the walk the web is it looser so every time you never stop learning and and the only way to learn is to have a dialogue a physical dialogue with all the tools of our trade um that's what i think well i think we're i'm doing the same thing from my side you know when we're using thermal cameras and we're using you know um apps that completely invert the image and show you a new color range and they were working in new and a new space but all of it i think leads to this state of mental freedom yes and a sort of safety to be able to be free where you don't feel aggressed where you feel just like you can pour every bit of energy into this state of creative freedom and then new visions start to come naturally because you pick things up without worrying about that or without feeling coded i think your muses have that in their performance as well that they can try things that they would never normally do they can let go they can play i think it's an incredibly important part of your of the way you work john is that creative liberation that you give yourself in moments like messing up days because yeah yeah i think that's that's for me is is very you know it is very akin to how i feel i'm in the studio to try and get rid of everything real and physical and and everything that sort of the world that we see around us and find that liberated space where it just feels so natural to be able to do different things and try different things and see different things and create yeah nikki and anton they went for a walk after the shooting a beautiful walk around the cotswold and they were sharing stories i talked to them yesterday that they mentioned how liberating they found the the whole experience both of them used the word liberating and you know they went for a walk and they analyzed their feelings yeah divine were in a state where they could actually share and talk and and that's so important nick yeah that's so important yeah not rush after the next plane the next job the next you know like they were they had assimilated it all and they and they were sharing you know their experiences and that's just really wonderful yeah yeah it's really gone the whole process has been very special but certainly it was a very special moment the shooting itself was very special and i you know in a way i would have much i'm very happy we did it there not in a sort of studio in town or whatever because it did make it feel more of a new thing and more of a special thing and definitely and very very very much that we were all part of our same sort of same same moment all together definitely and and everyone was in this bubble you know the kids when they went off set and in the evening they'd hang out and share stories and stuff but they were still in this this this wonderful um bubble um the creative bubble they they they never left it for one second you know it was um amazing the energy was so good nick really so good lovely really really though i mean sorry all all shoots are really important the shoots we do together are so magical and always have been john over the years have always been magical in different forms of different ways for different people but have always been magical um we should talk a little bit about the different narratives that are weaving their way through our film because they're they're on several levels we're okay the role of of killer um denise who is a horror story writer and who we asked to provide it's another narrative to make people feel actually there's something else that they're connecting to not just um the fashion film but actually giving it a um a rather sort of a spine tingling um surreal and um uh a narrative that you don't see straight away a narrative that sets itself in the back of your mind as you're watching it's very careful we've if we if we manage to succeed and do which i think we have um i think it's a very clever thing because it gives in one way um a possibility to keep on going like this the possibility to say okay well next season do you want to see the next episode so there is a sort of a kind of interesting um an interesting proposal there well i i i i think as well thanks to kiera and yourself and this idea of working with uh parallel narratives so it's the story of a collection within the story of the thriller as i said earlier the thriller aspect i found really appealing because it could speak the language of what it feels like during the process work and research if you like um which is like a thriller and the fact that we were able to weave those two stories simultaneously and they weave in and out and express those different things i mean i saw some footage this morning and um i looked at anton differently when he's back upstairs and what normally i would take as fat and angelic face yeah i've seen some of the other stuff that you guys have been put in and then you look at his face and his eyes and i'm reading he's colored my i'm vision right okay so um for me it it's working it and um it's it's super interesting i think it's super interesting this idea that um spirits could be released when we start to hack into charity shop fines is um so dear to my heart i mean i love it it's almost quite tangible that the clothes that we wear in some way take on the experiences we have whilst wearing them well that's what that's what fascinates me about period clothes old clothes costume charity shop finds that they come imbued with the emotion of the wearer uh or a default in the body of the shoulder was slightly higher or it was his favorite jacket and you have the crease marks or or he grew into it so you have the stress on the back of the sleeve or something so kind of like deport you know they've worn these players for many many years and their character is imbued well that for me is just have fun it just inspires way of cutting you know um whereas kind of been ready to wear you kind of iron all that out and you know now that it all becomes a bit too milanese for me i like the defaults that i find in these clothes that i imagine could i mean i don't know who would have worn them but for sure it starts the story and sometimes the defaults can lead to a whole new way of cutting or exploring a slip lining a collar that's half hanging off like i said uh ancestral hand-me-downs obviously a jacket that's been handed down through the family and then unfortunately you know got sold in some kind of sale and you chance upon it and it's imbued with history uh heritage fabric the cup all those things are it's really nice to point all that out when you're doing a fitting where often we want to polish and smooth and you know over produce it almost well actually i like that sleeve that's set in wrong it's really cool rappers let's try we need to replicate that because i really like it i don't lose it's a bit more ease on the back of one centimeter out and that's what's given us that you know yeah yeah it's it's the character coming through it yeah it's the person's characters how they wore the clothes and i think there's also something um again in the slightly in the spiritual zone if you want of of the experience of that you know if it's been joyous traumatic or sexual or whatever it's been it must in some way influence how the cloth is or we have no idea i remember since childhood people saying oh at some point in the future they'll be able to read the writing off the walls of all the events that happen in the room but and it's sort of kind of you feel just about possible but the clothes are much closer to us than the room so they must feel the emotion much more profoundly than the walls of the room i think what you've done in in in the film is allow the that to come through and that thing you speak about clothes speaking volumes and how there are many readings it happened to me once i was on a research trip to china and we went to an amazing market and there was this like mongolian family that had come down and they look like giant they were so tall and faces look like madigliani oval and turned and weather beaten cheats like rosy cheats and just the beauty and the textiles and the coat this guy was wearing this like green coat and you could see some kind of sheepskin coming out and this bright red really beautiful man and we were all like wow and he was having the same reaction he saw her ass and i think i was wearing like you know a levi's jacket okay and he froze and he clocked me and i was clocking him in full admiration and in my head i was like oh where can i find a coat like that where can i find a coat like that and um so we approached him and kind of visited ourselves we were staring but he would not stop staring yeah he kind of must have felt what i was feeling or yearning for i wanted his coat yeah he wanted my levi jacket right no words were exchanged i start to take my levi jacket off okay and just proffer it to him and he starts to undo the red sash and i'm so excited and then he gives me the coat i was like wow you know there was an interpreter but i was the coat so i gave him my jacket he gave me the coat and stephen was there and i can't remember who else and we were just like oh my god john i can't believe that happened the whole exchange was so exhilarating it wasn't until i got back to paris we got the coat out and i was sharing it with others and i turned the thing inside out inside the sleeve was his diary embroidered oh wow and all inside this oh yeah the power of the power of fashion the power of clothes yeah yeah yeah i'm sure he's happy with the levi's jacket and i'm still half the clouds what a uh an amazing um exchange i'll never forget that yeah that's a fantastic story one really important question it's really to do with the fact that you you've in a way found fashion film as a way of expressing your collection was that something that you find joyful would you like to go on doing that yes yes very very much so i mean all this came around i'd be completely transparent with you nick it was a short to mid-term uh idea almost um but as i got into it i i soon realized that this could be a long-term concept and that if it worked out well this blueprint this vocabulary that we're developing together for these visuals for sure i mean you know i've done quite a few big rock and roll shows in my time and i've always preferred the smaller more style online presentations but this experience um i'm totally converted excellent well on that note john we'll keep them on a cliffhanger for the next episode all right thank you john

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Id: EZUX_n4yRcY

Length: 45min 39sec (2739 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020