I suspect John Galliano is a very peculiar man. He is also gifted, a true master of imagination and craft. There is a good profile of him and House Margiela in this month’s WSJ Magazine (“Step by Step,” March 2018: behind a paywall, sorry).
V&R Chapter 7 explains Kolnai’s defence of the idea of nobility in the modern egalitarian age. I discuss there his argument that moral bearing essentially relies on privilege. Galliano agrees and has made privilege the principle of his business plan.
At both Margiela and Dior, Galliano organized the houses around a pyramid structure: couture setting the tone for the house, its quality and drama filtering down to the ready-to-wear collection, and lastly to the commerce generators of bags, shoes, perfume, etc. As he puts it, “I need to express myself — the parfum that can then be diluted into the eau de parfum, the eau de toilette.”
In this short, fun video Galliano returns to London and gets on a bus. One has the sense he has long ceased to be familiar with public transport: http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/john-galliano-going-back-home
