John Galliano is at heart a classicist, a couturier who believes in haute as an experimental laboratory for ideas to be realized with more ecumenical — though far from banal — resonance as ready-to-wear. He’s also a diva-loving pop culture enthusiast and now, older and savvier than the pure renegade of his youth, he gets commercial realities.
All of that fused into the intriguing Maison Margiela collection Galliano showed on Wednesday morning. The most obvious reference was to the artisanal couture collection he showed in July that offered a treatise on deconstruction and stripping garments down to their most elemental forms — a process he calls décortiqué.
But first: a blonde, a black sweater, a pair of legs. That Galliano can reference an icon whose image is indelibly embedded in the public psyche and have it fly over people’s heads (at least this reviewer’s) speaks to his non-linear take on that which inspired him. His Marilyn Monroe homage was a way into stage time for items from the Margiela core — good, smart, functional clothes, some, as basic as it gets — a beige suit, a pair of jeans.
In Galliano’s world, basic can beget pure invention. Here, he had his way with the familiar,
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