Christian Dior’s Fall 2000 Couture Collection by John Galliano Was a Heady Mix of Wedding Belles and Nightmares (original) (raw)

John Galliano’s Fall 2000 Haute Couture show for Dior might have opened with a voice intoning, “Understand the concept of love,” but transgression was his obsession that year. In January the designer presented his controversial Hobo collection, whose varied inspirations included the aristocratic tramp balls of the 1920s; his own 1984 graduation show; “street people the English couturier saw in the streets during his daily jog”; and, in the newsprint pattern, Elsa Schiaparelli. Whether Galliano was upending ideas of class and privilege, or making fun of the dispossessed was part of the debate.

He seemed to change tack in July, with a show whose narrative opened with a society-style wedding full of pomp and circumstance—and a fair bit of BDSM. The groom was handcuffed with pearls, and it only got stranger from there. Galliano might not have cast the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick-maker, but he did conjure a scary clown, a Roman soldier, a devilish dandy, a wimpled bondage nurse, a sado-priest, a gorilla-showgirl, a slash-necked Antoinette, and a saucy French maid. The narrative was freakish, fetishistic, and at time frankly frightening—i.e., the noose as accessory—but the clothes made fine use of the exquisite handicraft the Dior ateliers are capable of. And the less costumey clothes, particularly those in the wedding section, were made all the lovelier by the beauties, including Marisa Berenson, Anh Duong, and Carmen Dell’Orefice, who wore them.