John Galliano On Martin Margiela Dressing Zendaya And His Love Of The Process

TITLE: John Galliano on Martin Margiela, dressing Zendaya, and his love of the process | System CHANNEL: System DATE: 2024-06-27 ---TRANSCRIPT--- yes this is Auntie I found Auntie a few years back I just loved I fell in love with her immediately um the pose I mean I imagine that she was some kind of muse or that she would have been involved in the creative process of a sitting or draftsmanship with an artist in M panas um it could have been BR or it could have been migani or something um she’s totally articulated as you can see and um there’s lots of emotion on her these fabulous textiles that are worn with time almost like good luck symbol really I mean she accompanied me to my first artisano defil in London she loved it there she loved [Music] it John the show in January was uh went viral beyond what we’ve ever seen before why do you think it resonated and keeps resonating so much with people I was somewhat taken aack myself I mean I’ve had a couple of fashion moments but perhaps at that time not recorded the the way they are today and we’ve kind of looked into it to see you know what happened how did this happen um and and I think the resounding feeling is one of emotion that we created an emotion that perhaps people were hankering to see in clothes with our Muses and the music and the venue and the weather I mean it was a full moon all those things I think added up to to creating um this emotion that people seem to want to feel do you think that’s something that is sort of missing has been missing even myself for some time when I first came to M on Mel I I wanted to put the focus back on the clothes so that um and a little bit of theater can go a long long way I almost felt like I was denying a bit of myself how important the backdrop can be to the dream uh or you know challenging people to dream so I quite happy to show in our very clinical white box and then the pandemic hit us all and we had to find new ways of communicating so I kind of threw myself into film World um whether it was Olivia D or Nick Knight um creating narrative stories uh reinforcing our beliefs what we believed in in mes marela um and kind of learned a lot and then inevitably we got through that very difficult period and um I sense that people wanted to return to the physicality um but I didn’t want to go right back into the white box again cuz I thought wow it’s been nearly two years and one’s learned so much can I how can I carry on with this way of communicating embracing the different cultures involved with photography digital mixing film work theater show all those things and that was the cinema Inferno collection um which embraced all those things it was such a powerful tool for communicating and even after um and um was very seductive a very seductive um way of working and the images and and we could run with it within this production a lot of uh especially young audiences seemed to feel that they were experiencing uh an old JG show there were element of the kind of grand theatrical orchestrations that you used to put on um why do you think that resume so much with with people I think young and slightly older as well there were some some people that had reached out to me after and had said oh we grew up with I was eight and I was like watching your fashion shows I grew up with them and um actually it’s because of your shows that I I forged my way into the Fashion World um which was really nice to hear also they’d say but we never saw it again we thought that was just something from a bygone time um so to see it today it was like they were super excited um and then the young I mean the appeal and the appeal was enormous you saw they were mimicking or being inspired by the way Leon walked or shoving pillows up their skirts and things and um uh running and uh expressing themselves uh on Tik Tok it was like something that I’d never seen before quite amazing I mean I’ve always loved that you can reach out to the kids and Inspire them and you know you’ll see someone who you know doesn’t have the budget for but it’s incredibly creative and you know they’ll turn their trench coat back to front and it makes them feel great and makes me feel great to see that as well infusing uh theal show with those elements um the more sort of JG elements was that a conscious or an unconscious move on your part do you think I mean I can’t deny JG I I am John helano um and it’s it’s I know some people perhaps don’t quite understand the work we’re doing here but um we got to remember I had this incredible opportunity to spend time with Mata mat the founding father of this house um where it was so inspiring I mean I can’t you can’t imagine um but he said you know take uh take what you will from the DNA uh John protect yourself and make this house your own J gentlemanly but so smart as well I mean how could anyone myself dare to think what matam would be doing today because he’s an artist today he’s um uh expressing himself of caner so really no one would really know what having had that chat with him and delved into the archives and you know uh some of it I felt very comfortable with cuz there young designers we were um um experiencing researching whatever you know understanding deconstructing clothes to learn how to better construct them was kind of 80s no um so I felt quite comfortable with that and kind of understood a little bit of psychology um so I realized that things had to move on I’d had a little experience where perhaps from a personal point of view i’ pushed myself into a corner where the bias Cuts became so famous that’s all people talked about or the bar jacket my other day um so I didn’t want that to happen either because that can be very restricting to the thing has to flow it has to move on so of course I’m not going to deny JG um I had the blessing of Matan um and psychologically I felt I was doing the right thing for the house so when people try to create this contrast between maella and gallana what do you say to those people well everything I’m doing here is is is is for meon Mel and it’s been here nearly 10 years now so um it’s a culmination of all the little thesises that we’ve had you know we’ve often shared our pyramid where we talk about different things that might inspire a collection and that’s become almost you know the blood that caes through our veins our creative veins um that belongs to M Mel I mean I can look at some of those things on that pyramid and for sure they’re not areas that I’ve dared to experiment with or be inspired by um um or one is able to be inspired by those things in a completely different way being here yeah the the you know my love of the work in proess progress um the TW the you know the hidden Beauty um the emotions involved The Unfinished Symphony if you like um all that were things that kind of um resonated with with um what where I felt creatively I wanted to go which is very much indeed um over the years being at Marella I I think when you arrived here uh it was like a kind of breath uh you like you took a deep breath and it was uh it felt like everything was more future driven you were talking about technology and you were talking about the digital age and you continued to do so um and gradually you started infusing it with the elements of your early London collections uh that you were referencing or the bias cut or the siren dresses or um these various things um has designing all these collections for Mella since she came back to Fashion been a cathartic process for you yes you can say you can say that it has um I think when I came to maella it was after my I took some time out I was in recovery I came back and there was a whole new world happening um and surrounding myself with with young adults as well that kind of opened my eyes and understanding how they were communicating all that was really new for me and I embraced it it was electrifying as much as it was electrifying for the young adults in the team to hear and see how I how I worked it kind of worked both ways it was really a good time and from a point of view of communicating it was Radical um things like the bias cut and that I kind of intentionally put the breakes on that cuz I know what’s involved especially if you’re going to produce it and it’s quite something to be able to produce we did introduce it eventually through the meno I think it was the first artist in or men’s were collection but that was after you know a good year of testing um hanging the fabric to stretch working with industry backwards and forwards sharing little secrets tricks of the trade how how we could actually produce um a very languid loose suit for a Majel boy that hung um as beautifully as um one of the dresses I used to do at gallano but that took some working out until I felt that it was really right to go on the market and they still exist and they’re still the first things to to fly out very tall basketball players often favor them I remember the the first one it’s like electric blue material incredible sat satin B cve yeah yeah we went on to refine and polish and work it so that you could actually um produce it short runs cuz it’s still very demanding it has a life of its own um that fabric yeah yeah but then that pushed me to do it to move away from the satin back Crepes and I was cutting Tweed on the buyers cuz I thought it was a bit more day and then I got really excited about that cuz I hadn’t done that before so the idea of doing Day dresses on the buyers in washed Tweeds know you kind of find a way don’t you that kind of makes sense um so that was really exciting um to to push that bias even further and with Fabrics that perhaps I hadn’t dared to try all of this uh decade leads up to this year this kind of annus mirab list that you are having right now which is incredible the the the the show in January um uh the uh the the documentary and the Met Ball all are very kind of um it feels very momentous um what uh kind of thoughts went into doing the documentary I wanted to share the story I wanted to um share the story with young people um to make them a little bit more aware of the industry um that was really my the reason why I agreed to do that documentary and then I thought I would never have to talk about it again and just but here we go I contined to atone of course um really I wanted to share that story with with the young kids um really that’s what I wanted to do there how did you feel about it when it was done there was no Escape it was like a confession I couldn’t Flinch or move or anything so it was um quite confrontational to be filmed like that I now realized that it was a really good thing to do a really good thing to do and um in some have attributed it to me feeling a little bit more relaxed in the things that I’m doing um which could be true which could be true and it was very nice in the kind of consecutive order order that it happened that it led that that kind of led into the Met Ball where you then had like the the I think you had the most traction of any designer at the metool and there when they measure it like it’s completely amazing two of those looks especially were were very uh were very special to you I think um zand and Kim kesan um how did they come about those two looks well Kim had wanted to work for me as I can say this cuz she said it as so she’ been stalking me for about 5 years and had become very friendly with Alexi and we’d met two or three times in LA and um and I like I I liked her but it’s always nice to form a relationship and and um you know said whenever there’s a special project I I’d love you to do for us to do something together um and sometimes I couldn’t anyway this was the ideal moment the met so she’ reached out and I think we were in La already so we started the whole creative process um she put the time in uh we did fittings in La she came here and then linking this dress that was actually like silver metal that was toed to looked like dant like lace but it was um all put together linked together like Ori um over the corseted shape and then to to just throw it off kilter a bit this kind of washed and up cardigan um became very famous that c um so that was Kim and then we wanted to you know leave some just a sense us cuz she’s gorgeous it’s really gorgeous but we wanted to sense the skin a little bit more so we lightened up the makeup and um the idea of her going that ash blonde but we had to start doing it two months before for because just thought it looked more real to have the roots gr through and then do tonic rinses and just more sensuous K and she looked gorgeous in the pictures I thought she looked really gorgeous um s was a different story um which was really cute again someone that I’d been you know admired for some time and the opportunity came along and so we we worked together with law um we did quick sketches just she sent a mood board and um a lot of the stuff on the mood board was stuff that I created in in the past so just trying to understand what it was cuz there was so many directions and it was very flattering to have a large percentage of it will be myself so then I started sketching and inking and just no colors and not too much detail just to try and understand which direction they wanted to go in um um they wanted drama so they’d come to the right place for sure um and um yeah so then we started to work on that silhouette that dress um which I thought was kind of very her um and then the second dress that she wore for her second I think she opened the red carpet and closed the red carpet historically that has never happened um um the power of Zenda she actually it was a dress that I it was my first orature at Joni and um she’d become obsessed with that dress um so anyway we we did the fittings with her on the M Mella dress and then she she asked if I would leave the room for 5 minutes and it was a bit weird isn’t it like and I saw lur and her running around the back with this huge bundle and next door she put on this dress and sailed through and I was just like my God where did you get that from and she knew the whole history behind it you know she then showed me the corset passage number worn by Veronica web and um she’d bought it she owned the piece I got quite emotional wow this is someone that’s you know very very special so that night I said I I want to write I want to write I want to write I was inspired so I I wrote a little treatment for her which subsequently she said she was very she really enjoyed it cuz normally she has to work it all out so we created this Duchess The Duchess of Lexington and 77 I know from it was like the the nearest metro stop to the Metropolitan if you like and that she had fallen asleep on the Metro for 100 years and then awoke and suddenly you know the doors were slide open and shut and um Distant Memories she felt that she was at her country house anyway that little story enabled her to do those fantastic shapes that kind of looked effortless um she became a got perfect Alana a m so fab in her balini brush stroke dress yes yes that was um I started to notice that when we were walking through the pictures you know sometimes you do see things in they call it my homework here at the end of fittings I take a pile of photocopies and that and just see it through the lens almost to see how that’s going to look cuz these women they have to look fabulous but fabulous in 360 and in an uncontrolled environment it’s not like a shoot you know where you can you know there are people shooting them from every angle so we would do that whole 360 fitting around and around up the stairs down the stairs what do we see which is up the St it was intense but I wasn’t going to let them down yeah I remember one of the first times we spoke when you were at bellaa you told me you wanted to create the coolest most Cutting Edge Couture house that’s true and that that’s still our mission our mission just going back to the point you made just a second ago that did you know the the gallano ism for sure I’ve done bias CS before and for sure I’ve had foray into corsets but that inspired by Body morphology and the pictures of Brasa creating that body shape was something quite original yes I’ve done corsetry before but not that shape um and yes I’ve done bias cutting but I’ve never fitted buas cut on a pre-ordained shape so for me that was like freshness and newness and challenging um I knew how to work the other way um so it was actually new territory for me as well uh to fit on the more voluptuous shapes and kind of at the same time I was playing around with Kim as well so you can imagine I was um totally exhilarated and excited by it yes the familiar but in a new way and I I think that’s what’s interesting as well it kind of from distance looked familiar but on closer expection you could see that the biasing had been really pushed um the IDE of a seamless dress had been pushed to Infinity now the lace dress with the godes and the papon encrusted on her derrier you know to do godes where there was no seams but each flower was encrusted was quite a feet of engineering um and then that aquarel or retrograding um way of water coloring the clothes the idea that some of them would start off as a linear sketch and then as they work down the body become more 3D and you’d recognize the dress at the end so that kind of like uh diffusion a degr not just of color but degr of fabric degr of um mediums degr of embroideries a whole degr was really fun and new for me for me too the amount of Illusion is amazing when you when you go go close to any of your work and especially this collection from January it’s really astonishing how how much people don’t actually see because they’re not supposed to it’s all uh this kind of beautiful Mirage that unfolds yeah we we and I’d heard that from people and people say oh you know it’s all over so fast that we’re kind of in a trance and enjoying it and trying to understand what it is well so we decided to have like an open day uh a couple of weeks after almost like um what you call it a postmortem um to invite people um and students um and people in the house um to come and see the clothes close up to enjoy the research but all the research has gone into not just the production of the collection but the actual production of the defil so we shared all that from you know the my research into dolls porcelain dolls and different periods different finishings um all the photographs of um brassai the moods the characters um and then a lot of people hadn’t realized that a lot of the Men’s Wear inspired pieces the caban the duffel the trench the olster coat the you know but actually they weren’t in it was an illusion as well um so what we wanted to do was to create the illusion of men’s wear fabrics and the illusion that it was in that fabric a heavy Soldier military inspired coat was as light as the feather you could roll them up like that so we chose the right Fabric and we printed on it to look like a military surge um then to give it the texture we worked in a miloy way um so to give it the texture of those heavy coats it would be double organza uh lint some chiffon cure techniques even if it was to look like an old up military coat but the thing was as light as a feather um the sense of history or emotion was the fin L that was actually printed or Moon bathed you know uh inspired by the lighting of as well that was printed on the tour which was the final layer so it was true and real Couture technique um it kind of looked familiar from the distance but when you rolled those things up in your hand you could see that it was just like an impossibility it was it was like a FEA and so the challenge for that was fantastic and all the different process which we tried to show as well through our book so a herring bone we had to find the right way to print it on the right surface that was super light so it was printed on uh kpen normally Associated the Light summer dresses the girls you know um then um the the the ravaging of the Moon how it could have bleached away some parts of her coat it was left you know in your wardrobe and it had no door whatever time you know time um so there we went into a dark room and we tried to recreate the light of brassy um with torches and directional Lighting on the TW that was that then became the beginning of an artwork that was but everything had to Rack or you know like a grand beaded dress that one would do for good CH it was using all that techniques in a a new way maybe did you have a lot of orders we we did get orders um a lot for us cuz we’re not totally set up and um unfortunately we did have to turn some down or come to an agreement that we could produce them far Mur when we good but yeah no we did I think a lot of people when they watch a show like the one in January we’ll think in this age of fashion where everything has become so sort of commercially driven and uh there’s all this fireworks around the shows and not so much focus on the actual clothes and so on um how does John gallano managed to keep that level of creative Integrity be so uncompromising um and maintain all your values you never let your values down like how how hard is that today in fashion well I think values are values one keeps those but we should also remember that some of those commercial I say constraints but the things that you have to respect are more driven with the ready to we lines what we saw in January was Couture was artisanal and here it works as an inspiration it’s the top of the pyramid as we’ve of often talked about it’s the PA Farm that will inspire the other collections are ready to wear and yes they do take time I mean that was like the first I think it was a year since the previous um cure um because it takes time to develop a line that intensity of work and creation and um with your team and the the hours of fitting you you want to create beautiful things they take time they take time um really a lot a lot of time went into the body modification the corsetry took you can’t rush that you you just can’t that was a lot of engineering and a lot of fitting and a lot of support work underneath things that you may not even have seen um the ritual of dressing it was like super inspiring before we could actually build the collection in fact I would say that I think longer was spent on the undergarments than the actual collection itself which was full on but um we had to get the foundations right first and then we could build on our body shape yeah it takes time it takes time to develop I me it’s I think it’s worth it um because it does INSP and maybe helps to move Fashion on a little bit volumes techniques finishings that can Inspire the industry yeah for ready to work but you must have a very good way of staying stubborn somehow you know you must be I’m full of Hope um I believe in what I’m doing so making compromises it’s never the same is it never the same um I’ve maybe been able to explain better how some of these things that we do in Kure can influence Inspire educate the ready to we and now seeing results that it does it’s easier yeah the justification of it yeah but I mean look at the reactions the understanding of it as well sometimes yeah people aren’t aware that some of these um dresses can take up to 182s you know it’s refining refining and polishing and refining and the clock’s ticking and it’s still refining and I was still carry on refining it you know um each each look each fabric each teach to CH something completely new yeah a simple bu cut velvet skirt well you try making a skirt in velvet on the buyers when you’re having to deal with the pile how you press it how you brush the hair up the you know for it look seamless it takes a lot of the great talents we have in the ellia really um who are pressing steaming and with a toothbrush pulling each hair each fiber out of the velour so that the seams are invisible it’s just like mind BL yeah that kind of detail is is you can only do that fitting Leon’s pants over a course at mayie I’ve seen a about drers like that it went on and on and on and on I mean he was putting the time in he was here being corset trained and and so you know whenever he came in between had the TRS on it was like polished and refined the ple were open they were dropped they were closed they were dropped there was a just yeah time time I think that is does make you very different to um many other parts of the industry um do you keep up with what’s going on in the industry in what sense do you still have a sort of uh curiosity to go and like see look at another show on your phone or yeah I’ve done that and I love shopping you love shopping yes I I I I I love discovering new designers young designers uh new designers in new places with traditional houses um yeah of course it’s all part of my work isn’t it um it’s important to to to keep plugs in yeah yeah yeah how do you shop do you go to stores you do online I love walking the streets and going into boutiques and talking to the managers and yeah um I I love it I love that yeah can you still get inspired by fashion when you are creating all the time or do you have to look elsewhere for it do you have for inspiration I mean art and culture oh I look I look everywhere every film music um we all do all creatives are open to a vast stimuli of um inspiration um not just fashion history or part of the narrative as well we were talking about the narrative earlier with the muses it’s quite known here that I’ll introduce certain pieces of music to help create that mood not just for the Muse but for the team that’s working um different pieces of music can change the emotion in the way you’re draping or cutting or producing a frill or a staccato something more violent something less more aggressive less aggressive sof vival pieces of music that you still need you need for your soul but don’t always intrude in that creative process which is often silent anyway um my Muses talk to me through body language um I me we talk after Thomas and V we have a good old banter after during the fittings we never talk we never talk I’m just looking and checking and fitting and music is important to create the vision the feeling the uh whatever you know you’re really really cold you’re standing by the sin you you know it’s been a the greatest part of your life and you’re trolling back you know your shoes are killing you you kick them off you buy the same it’s really cold you’re so cold you’re so cold so cold until we kind of get the shape that could inspire a way of cutting I think we called it gestal cutting there’s a very strong wind blowing on you now you know with and they give you know just little Direction like that um is translated in their embody language which we then record um which then can be translated as a as a way to cut the drap in a jacket or a trouser or yeah the senses all senses and it’s not just music is also scent right you layer all these oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah we take it uh yeah all of it yeah it’s important the sent it’s that first aultry introduction into the line almost certain sents that I felt were important [Music] or even the scent of gin on a woman’s breath can bring things you know mixed with some kind of Tangerine pigment lip that this the sense it’s all how it’s built up that character uh or who you know what did it smell like those uh young boy the scent the the grand classic scent that their fathers might have worn you know when they’re under that bridge it all builds up the story um which they lap up the muses I mean they they they they just they love it and then you see what they do I mean they go the extra thousand kilometers and more yeah when you are such a Storyteller and your way of creating really exceeds the boundaries of fashion so much um do you find that you have an easier time relating to people outside of fashion if you were to mirror yourself in someone um who do you consider your peers creatively people that share the same values work ethic commitment um um those kind of people no names they’re friends and sometimes I like to keep that private indeed what would you like for people to people who wear the M Mel that you have evolved and created and um innovated um what would you like for it to mean to them today the design and make is incredibly considered the fit all those things have been taken into it how it feels to we myel today a huge amount of work that went into that in my early days where perhaps some things were quite generic understandably so it hadn’t had a a leader for some time um so the actual what it feels to wear a Mella dress what it feels to wear a Mella Jack um I hope that you could feel it and that it’s you know considered design your Creations here are are very loaded with values as well I think you know that you’ve always from the beginning talked about nonconformity and uh uh you know being different being um individual individuality and um and all of these things and I think it it very much you feel that within the G I embrace all those things and believe in them absolutely and um encourage my team to be that um I can share some experiences with them and I do I positively encourage them to express themselves through clothing and you know you can wear what you want here there’s a lot of soul in what you create here there’s soul in the garments because I think it’s created with a soul and something that’s authentic and authentic um it’s nice to imbue a garment with soul isn’t it I mean it really is more than it’s just more isn’t it I think um when you’re inspired by I don’t know an old man’s coat and he’s worn it for 50 years and it’s imbued with his character and how he’s worn I me just to take that as a lead that could inspire a way of cutting that coat you know deep effects as well that would ordinarily be ironed out and picture perf well I don’t want to lose that emotion in the clothes I think that brings so Chic about that I think um like you know ancestral hand me down that comes with that history or that someone’s worn and you know I think something quite sensual about that too I I like that I like that it’s like a scent it’s like a scent you can’t put your fing on it but it’s that little thing that’s slightly off that you might want to enhance or inspires something else and it’s just that little thing that you know is going on on your body that’s um can be incredibly empowering how content do you feel today it’s a good question after these first after the first half year of this year that you’ve been through the very content I’ve never relied on my work or I’ve never relied on anything to uh for Happ you to find happiness I realize that that is in my head um cuz when you do I think sometimes you can be disappointed but I know that by putting on just a piece of music I can change my mood really quickly I mean Nan seconds um but um of course I’m conent here [Music]