BAD-BOY BRITS WHO CONQUERED THE catwalk
Gods And Kings: The Rise And Fall Of Alexander McQueen And John Galliano Dana Thomas Allen Lane €29.80
Between 1993 and 2011, Parisian couture was torn up and stitched together again by two badboys from London. John Galliano was in charge at Christian Dior for most of that time, while Alexander McQueen reigned at Givenchy.
Out went the discreetly elegant ballgowns favoured by elderly socialites, and in came something that smacked of anarchy. Galliano dressed his models in pink mini-kimonos, while McQueen sent them out in ‘bumsters’, his signature silhouette designed to show off bottom cleavage.
Dana Thomas’s job as the Paris-based correspondent of The Washington Post gave her a ringside seat while all this divine madness unfurled. She interviewed both designers several times during those frenzied years, and has since interviewed many of the people who played a part in propelling them to the top.
The result is a riveting double biography that delves deep into their private obsessions, their substance abuse and, of course, their sad declines.
Although born 10 years apart, there are many parallels between their lives. Both were gay and came from closeknit working-class families. Both attended St Martin’s University of the Arts in its glory days and started out cutting up bits of fabric in grubby flats before being spotted by aristocratic girls from the other side of town.
McQueen’s great champion was Isabella Blow, an eccentric fashion journalist who thought nothing of completing her outfit with a hat decorated with a whole crab. Galliano’s muse was Amanda Lady Harlech, another glossy magazine maven with exquisite taste. Both women ensured their protégées were spotted by the right people and magazines, and both were dumped when no longer needed.
Thomas is a tad tin-eared when conveying the social and geographic landscape of these early London years. But once Galliano gets to Paris in 1993 her narrative really takes off. She is terrific at describing the shock value of his shows.
Instead of simply sending his models down the catwalk, he staged ‘events’ in railway stations and derelict warehouses, with steam engines, snow machines and the cast of Disneyland’s Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.
Offending the grand old ladies who used to buy couture was the whole point for Galliano, whose front row was soon bristling with the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett.
The shockwaves weren’t quite so intense in 1996 when McQueen arrived in Paris. That’s partly because Galliano had paved the way but also, suggests Thomas, because McQueen was a nicer man and a better designer whose clothes actually fit – something that couldn’t always be said of Galliano’s.
Producing unwearable clothes may sound like a disaster, but Galliano’s theatrical couture wasn’t meant to be worn so much as attract headlines around the world. This, in turn, boosted the demand for all those Dior spin-offs – the perfume, the make-up, the bags – especially in the developing markets of Asia. It was only when Galliano’s bad behaviour descended into hate crime – he was filmed shouting racist abuse at strangers in a Paris café – that the moneymen realised he had to go.
McQueen also spiralled out of control on drink and drugs. Nine days after his mother died in 2010, he hanged himself. Unlike Galliano, his legacy remains untarnished.
Galliano, by contrast, is only now beginning to take his first tentative steps back into the world of high fashion. Whether he is allowed to stay remains to be seen.
‘Offending those who used to buy couture wast he whole point’