Following the news of Galliano’s departure from Maison Margiela after ten years, through the pages of AnOther, we reminisce on his dazzling tenure at the Italian label – from dressing Marina Abramović to Cillian Murphy
“He came to my house in Paris and just started talking,” John Galliano said of meeting Martin Margiela in the Autumn/Winter 2015 issue of this magazine. “I have such huge respect for him, for the house that he built. How brave, how forward-thinking.” That was over ten years ago, and since then, he has been at the helm of the house and responsible for some of the most important, extraordinary fashion moments from the past decade. Yesterday, a statement posted to his Instagram announced that Galliano is stepping down from his post at the label.
“My heart overflows with joyous gratitude, and my soul smiles,” he writes, before referencing his 14 years of sobriety, and an illuminating conversation with Renzo Rosso – president of Only the Brave (OTB Group), which owns Maison Margiela – about legacy, the mourning of his previous identity, but ultimately feeling content in his new self. “The greatest, most precious gift he gave me was the opportunity to once again find my creative voice when I had become voiceless. My wings mended, and I better understood the all-consuming act of creativity.” He did not disclose his next move, nor has the house disclosed a successor, leaving one more spare seat in fashion’s great musical chairs.
His appointment at Maison Margiela came as a surprise to the industry in 2014. His antisemitic outburst had been generously publicised in the media, and continues to be the subject of deliberation, with a documentary debuting earlier this year following his remarkable fall from grace. Combining that with concerns that Galliano’s longstanding reputation as a showman could sully the quiet, anonymised power the label had nurtured its roots with under the famously reclusive Martin Margiela, Rosso’s choice of successor felt unprecedented.
But from his debut collection in January 2015 – a grand and experimental 24-look Artisanal collection of linen bed sheets turned into tailored jackets, and dresses derived from antique curtains – Galliano’s re-melding of the house’s codes crystalised in some signature theatrics that turned a blank page on the designer’s journey. Through these ten years, collections appeared to get better and better, more recently staging a revolutionary play for Margiela’s A/W22 Artisanal collection starring his “super-muses”, and crescendoing with that viral S/S24 Artisanal collection of unreal bodies and extraordinary craft, which our fashion features director Alexander Fury called “an astonishing, extraordinary, you-need-to-be-there-to-believe-it moment of fashion trickery.”
Below, in the pages of AnOther and Another Man, we highlight the best of John Galliano’s spectacular tenure at Maison Margiela.
