High & Low – John Galliano

[Rhythmic beats join; Music distorts]

Are you blonde? Are you blonde, with...

No, but I love Hitler.

People like you would be dead today.

Your mothers, your forefathers, would be gassed.

Do you have a problem?

With you. You're ugly.

John Galliano, former Creative Director of Christian Dior ,

was convicted of a hate crime--

Drunken anti-Semitic tirade against a woman at a cocktail bar--

- This is huge. - It's huge.

He was a rockstar of the fashion community--

Shameful. Absolutely shameful.

I'm so against anyone that could say something anti-Semitic--

Natalie Portman put out a statement saying, 'Enough is enough--

I am deeply shocked and disgusted

as an individual who is proud to be Jewish--'

Galliano arrived in court by a back door,

but still couldn't avoid the inevitable media frenzy.

He faces a potential six-month prison sentence

and a 22.000 Euro fine, if found guilty.

The prosecution are alleging he's a drunk and a racist.

It was a disgusting thing, foul thing, that I did.

It was just horrific.

Can you tell me how you think you ended up in that place?

Yeah, I'm going to tell you everything.

Yeah.

I've got the shakes. I need a cigarette, sorry.

Mm.

Oh...

[Music plays - Spellbound, by Siouxsie & The Banshees]

Maggie out! Maggie, out!

During the Thatcher years, I wasn't joining marches and things like that.

I was into sketching and drawing.

I ended up prepping a portfolio for Saint Martin's School of Art.

They took on very few people.

The competition was really strong,

but they gave me a place and a grant.

I saw like-minded people. It was like,

.. thank God I'm not the only one!

There was one amazing character called David Harrison.

Has he got that... Putting on that posh accent still?

He was very shy when I first met him.

And I sort of loosened him up a bit.

I always felt like I was his big sister.

Malcolm McLaren wanted David to front the Sex Pistols,

because he was so outrageous.

And I guess he was expressing things that I wished I could, I don't know.

I mean, I was still living at home.

Yeah, I-- not the peacock that I later became.

He was very suburban, even the way he dressed.

You know, he was into labels and stuff.

I introduced him to Vinted.

It was just good old clothes shops in those days.

[Music plays - To Cut a Long Story Short , by Spandau Ballet]

To go clubbing, I'd have to get a bus to the world of Soho,

Old Compton Street.

The girls, the styling, the music.

Ah! As a teenager, I was unaware of all this before that.

John had a vicious tongue.

He used to have like half a pint of lager and he'd be drunk.

He'd always get a little bit out-of-control drunk.

You had to sort of look after him.

He loved flashing his little bum off.

It was the beginning of the New Romantics.

There was a theatre that had a huge sale.

You could buy an eighteenth-century cloak, and you could buy a frilly blou--

You know what I mean?

So, they all stormed that, and they were the ingredients

they took to start building up this New Romantic look.

And then I took a job as a dresser at the National Theatre.

[Song transitions into low, pensive music]

You saw clothes in an environment.

One was interested how that character moved or smelt.

All those things came in, the accessories,

you know, the total look, I suppose you'd call it today.

And then I remember I went to see Abel Gance's Napoleon at The Barbican.

It blew me away.

That little shot of him running, when he falls in the snow and gets up,

and the lashes are covered in snow, I mean, obsessed!

You don't know how obsessed I am.

Of course, it had an influence.

Of course, it did.

That's when I embarked on doing my research

and preliminary sketches for my graduation show, 'Les Incroyables.'

I was being a French revolutionary,

sketching, drawing, aquarelleing,

creating stories.

The way I wrote changed. It became very eighteenth-century.

And when it was too easy to draw with my right hand,

I'd put the nib and the quill and the ink in my left hand to get that quizzical,

curious line. You know, obsessed, obsessed.

And I didn't know how to cut, I didn't know how to sew--

I could draw, and it was my teacher...

Yeah, I remember him saying, "Just stop. Look at your drawings.

Cut like you draw the line."

The door opened. I was off.

[Music plays - Goblin from Suspiria 's soundtrack]

We knew that something very exciting was happening.

I mean, there was just such a buzz in the college about John's graduation show.

Those ten looks really stand out in memory

as the top five fashion shows I've ever seen.

It was absolutely astonishing.

It was quite revolutionary.

Coats could be worn the right way, inside out, upside down.

The boys could wear skirts, girls could wear skirts. Long--

Genderless!

It was just this incredible energy and passion.

And you just thought,

"Here's someone who is touched with genius."

I'm sitting with John Galliano,

one of London's numerous, and hottest stars.

John, can you tell me a little bit about your background?

Well, I just graduated from Saint Martin's in July.

I showed a collection called "Les Incroyables",

which was based on the French Revolution,

and that went down really well.

So, straight away, I was here at Olympia, showing my spring/summer things.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Well, for this collection,

it was based on a paragraph which I read about Afghanistan,

where King Amanullah forced his subjects to wear European dress.

Of course, they revolted.

I tried to capture that sort of tension and the romance of it all.

Have you started to plan, or any ideas of what you'll be doing next?

- Uh-huh. - You have?

Yes. The Winter Collection. And I'm hoping to actually have a catwalk show,

'cause I feel that I have very strong statement to make.

I was going out with this girl who was a model,

and she said to me, "Come and see this fashion show.

There's this guy, John Galliano, and he's incredible."

And my girlfriend comes out, and she's got a tree in her hair,

and she's got clogs on.

And she's got two dead mackerel.

And then she's coming down the catwalk like this.

And the girl started throwing the dead fish at the audience, right.

And people are like ducking and

I'm going, "This is great!" I loved it. I was literally like, "Uh?"

[Music concludes; Cheers and applause]

I go backstage afterwards.

And John comes up to me and he says, "I love what you do,

I really want to work with you."

[Music plays - Haysi Fantayzee , by Jeremy Healy]

He genuinely didn't care about money at all.

He just wanted me to be able to facilitate.

"Just make sure I can continue making my fantasy."

That was it.

I can remember one particular moment in one show

where the girls came out in the finale in the white muslin dresses

that he'd chucked water over, so they would cling to their bodies.

And he had this logo that was a rubber stamp.

He'd stamped it on the girls' foreheads.

The dye ran down their faces and onto their white dresses.

It was amazing.

And so, so beautiful that it made me cry.

After the show, he would ask, "Did the editors cry?

Did you notice whether Polly had a tear in her eye?"

So, it was about the emotion.

It was just a quest to produce the most beautiful thing we could.

The 1987 winner of the British Designer of the Year Award

is John Galliano.

- -

We're really pleased to have

John Galliano here today.

He only left Saint Martin's four years ago.

- So, um... - Three...

Three? Oh, well, there you go, you see?

Possibilities for you all.

An inspiration for you all, really.

Because of the power of the shows,

John was already within a fashion crowd, a superstar.

But at that point, we had an issue.

It's been quite difficult with John's clothes,

because they are a little more complicated to wear

than some of the other designers, and quite hard to sell.

Do you find sometimes that the cut and the shape

doesn't have the necessary hanger appeal?

Yeah, um, yeah, people have said that before.

But then sometimes it actually clinches a sale,

'cause it looks so interesting on the hanger that it attracts someone to it.

Even though the clothes were beautiful,