2015 Met Gala: "China : Through the Looking glass" & John Galliano

                                                               

Dior 2003 Haute Couture show

                                                                     By Deborah Ferguson

   On the eve of the annual Met Gala, I felt it would be ideal to highlight one of the most prominent designers being featured in the exhibit ; John Galliano.  He more than any other western RTW designer has consistently channeled Asian culture, particularly Chinese traditional dress into a lot of his collections while he was at Dior. Particularly his Haute Couture collection in 2003. Curator Andrew Bolton has selected some of the archive Dior silhouettes that will be on display along with Alexander McQueen, Valentino at The Metropolitan Museum exhibit.

    The Met Gala exhibition will be an in-depth look into how traditional Chinese clothing has been reinterpreted by RTW designers. The show's artistic director; Wong Kar Wai . The Exhibition book "China: Through the looking glass" is a visual history  of Chinese dress and how it has been reinterpreted into western art, fashion and cinema dating back to 1765. There will also be 500 exquisitely boxed , special edition, numbered books /catalogs of the 2015 exhibit.

2003 Dior Haute Couture: an image from the Met exhibit catalog

    

    A Transcript of Andrew Bolton interviewing John Galliano on his Asian inspiration....

ANDREW BOLTON: More than any other designer featured in this catalogue and related exhibition, you have found China to be a recurrent source of inspiration in your work. What drew you to China initially?
JOHN GALLIANO: I was fascinated with the culture. In retrospect, I think it was because I knew very little about it. Before I visited China, it was the fantasy that drew me to it, the sense of danger and mystery conveyed through Hollywood. Much later, I learned more about the real China through research—paintings, literature, architecture. My design process involves in-depth research, and I make a scrapbook for every collection with images that show my current thinking. But, yes, my initial interest in China was fueled by movies, by their fantasized and romanticized portrayals.

B: Designers often view China through the lens of cinema; that’s one of the main propositions of China: Through the Looking Glass. Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s—especially those featuring Anna May Wong—have been a particular source of inspiration.
G: Images of Anna May Wong have appeared frequently in my scrapbooks. The allure and mystique she projects are extremely powerful and seductive.

B: She seems to have been a source for your spring/ summer 1993 collection, which you titled “Olivia the Filibuster.” It included several dresses based on the qipao. Some featured a spiraling dragon motif that reminded me of a dress Anna May Wong wore in Limehouse Blues [see page 140].
G: Absolutely, she was the primary source of inspiration for those pieces. The fabric of the dresses was like licorice—black and super shiny. The dragon motif was a heat transfer with gold leaf. Some of the dresses were slashed strategically at the hip, so when the girls walked, the slash opened and closed, revealing the flesh beneath. It was like a wink.

B: Your first haute couture collection for Christian Dior [spring/summer 1997] included two dresses inspired by Chinese export shawls, one pink and the other chartreuse [see pages 174–75]. The pink version reminds me of a dress Anna May Wong wears in a rare, hand-colored publicity photograph [see vellum facing page 174].
G: Yes, that photograph was one of my points of reference. I’ve always loved Chinese shawls—the deep fringe, the exquisite embroidery. Nicole Kidman wore the chartreuse version to the 1997 Academy Awards. It was the first time that an actress had worn a major dress to the Oscars. It was quite a brave statement, that chartreuse.

B: Your debut collection for Dior was partly inspired by China, and Mr. Dior himself drew heavily on Chinese references. He showed models titled “Chine,” “Pékin,” and “Shanghai” in 1948. Later he featured models called “Nuit de Chine,” “Bleu de Chine,” “Hong Kong,” and “Chinoiseries.” During your time at Dior, did any of those models serve as a catalyst for your Chinese-inspired collections?
G: My models at Dior frequently referenced Mr. Dior’s, so yes, absolutely, they would have served as a catalyst. Probably not the main catalyst, though. They would just have been woven into my storyline.

 

Dior Haute Couture Spring 2003