THROUGHOUT his many collections, John Galliano has often had a penchant for pulling characters from disparate times and places, whether that be austere nurses patrolling sterile-white halls or the swashbuckling incroyables.
An ardent storyteller, for this seasons Margiela couture collection, Galliano choose to awaken his muses in a feature film entitled A Folk Horror Tale, created in collaboration with Oscar-winning director Olivier Dahan.
In the film’s prelude, Galliano is drowned in a noir lighting, eyes glittering, voice purring as he explains the collection’s tension between raw and refined, “it’s a Streetcar Named Desire, the animalistic of Marlon and the refined poetry of Stella.”
Clearly seen in the Anonymity of the Lining in several looks, slicing into fabrics to reveal several layers of detailed lining, unfolding like chapters in a storybook.
Set in a 19th-century fishing village, the feature film is a banquet of differing personas. Fishermen fighting against thrashing waves, phantom figures, a cursed crown of shards and colossal skeletal masks worn in a ceremonial dance – all spliced with the symphonious sound of sea shanties.
Though vastly different, the reclusive utopian community are tethered in their battle against the forces of nature and time, magnificently reflected in the eroded, weathered, and ripped clothing.
Developed in the artisanal ateliers, Galliano devised the technique of essorage, diluting and shrinking the deadstock fabric through enzyme and stonewash treatments, allowing the cottons, jacquards and Gobelin fabrics to seethe with the shreds of a bygone era.
Old British newspapers are darned onto a blue Guernsey knit by artist Celia Pym and slashed into the hems of coats, paired with wooden derby clogs.
Dissecting and rebuilding clothes to reveal a faint whiff of their past life mingled with the present, is a long-expected design trait of Galliano. But there seemed to be a more primitive heartbeat pulsating through this collection, a suggestion that when confronted with the wrath of nature, community is integral to the fight.
by Sophia Ford-Palmer