John Galliano: High and Low

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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Kevin McDonald profiles the now infamous fashion designer, John Galliano in “John Galliano: High & Low.” The documentary is fast paced, compelling and heartrending. Full of color and verve, it will keep you guessing right up until the end.

Galliano was born in Gibraltar in 1960. He was shy and knew he was different from the expected norm. As a boy, he once said to his mother, that another was “Gorgeous.” His father heard the remark and beat him and belittled him with a stream of withering insults. Sometimes his mother joined in. Galliano received chastisement from both his school and the church. As a consequence, he invented a fantasy world as a defense, and started drawing, captivated by cinema and fashion.

As a young man at the start of MTV television, he became a follower of the New Romantic movement: the bands Classix Nouveaux and Spandau Ballet.

In 1989, Galliano moved to Paris and met Moroccan designer Faycal Amor. The young designer was on the path to success. In 1993, he met Andre Leon Talley and Vogue editor Anna Wintour who further increased his access to the famous and gifted.

In October 1996, Galliano headed Dior. It was a milestone. He became known for big overcoats and puffy shirts, the wardrobe made iconic by the French Revolution. In the years that followed he became known for all that was eccentric, brash or against the norm.

Galliano once showcased a collection featuring a wardrobe made of newspapers. He was immediately criticized and picketed, accused of ridiculing the homeless population.

Galliano lived for sensation and the condition of an outsider, occult, and taboo.

Then in 2010, in three separate incidents, drunk at a Paris cafe, Galliano unleashed a toxic stream of antisemitic hate, targeting one French Jewish woman and one Asian man, if not more.

The revered designer was arrested. He attempted to sue the Asian man for defamation, but he lost his case. Galliano was now persona non grata. A man alone. No one would hire him.

After over two years in reflection, meeting with a rabbi and going to rehab, Galliano joined the house of Oscar de la Renta.

Again, the upsetter shocked the media, by adopting the hairstyle in keeping with the Orthodox Jewish community. After some pressure, Galliano apologized, but to a few, never to satisfaction.

This film is both delicate and disturbing. Galliano is an ambulatory vexation, opaque and mysterious. It is truly upsetting that he cannot comprehend his behavior or his actions. During much of the film, he is on the edge of tears, his eyes dissolving into black rivers, speaking of wayward applications of mascara, parental abuse and the loss of his manager and friend Steven Robinson.

Galliano emerges as a one of kind shapeshifter, forever hyper, forever restless. He is a gypsy, a pirate and a scintillating wreck, a creator and a destroyer.

In the final moments, at the conclusion of his recent installation entitled “Inferno,” Galliano runs away, desperate to escape the crowd and the piranha eyes of paparazzi. The designer remains an Aubergine-banded antihero, a scamp of sensation, refusing to be pinned by society and its stitch of convention. Galliano, at once a swirl of legendary vowels as well as a very human being, is intermixed in mystery, full of danger and design.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com