December 11, 2024 |
After weeks of speculation, John Galliano has announced he is leaving Maison Margiela. His successor is yet to be revealed.
In a lengthy statement posted to his personal Instagram, Galliano wrote: “Today is the day I say Goodbye to Maison Margiela. My heart overflows with joyous gratitude, and my soul smiles. For I am 14 years old today – 14 years sober. Living a life better than I ever dreamt possible, and this is thanks to two people – two truly beautiful people whom I both love and cherish. They, however, are too humble to allow me to mention their names here. We know who they are, and I will be forever indebted to them, forever grateful.”
Over the last 10 years, Galliano has elevated Margiela to tremendous new heights. He joined the brand in 2014 after he was ousted from both Dior and the fashion industry at large in 2011 when a video emerged of him delivering an antisemitic verbal attack against a woman in Paris the year earlier. Where at Dior he was famously in the fashion spotlight, at Margiela he remained firmly in the background, never taking a bow at the end of his shows and giving the press very few interviews.
At Margiela, he married Martin’s anarchic approach with his own narrative-driven design language. His models stalked the catwalk with menacing struts in Margiela couture crafted from everything from quilted bin-liners through to bulging pieces of foam, or elevated and deconstructed silhouettes that looked like they were created in another lifetime (both in the past and light years into the future).
He routinely scavenged vintage shops and his own back catalogue to help guide his collections which were fuelled by artistic expression and sheer emotion. Most memorable was his swan song collection, Artisanal 2024. Staged under the Pont Alexandre III bridge in Paris, it was a show that stretched far beyond the fashion sphere, becoming a viral moment thanks to Pat McGrath’s porcelain doll make-up looks and the models – including Gwendoline Christie – “who performed their characters with total commitment – strutting, scuttling, preening, posing under the movement direction of Pat Boguslawski,” wrote 10’s Claudia Croft. “In many ways, this show felt like the designer was coming back to himself – reclaiming himself.”
In his later years at the brand, we saw a lot more of Galliano. First in the Nick Knight-directed S.W.A.L.K, a 1-hour film which opened the doors of his Margiela atelier for the first time, and in High & Low, the 2023 documentary that followed the designer’s rise and falls through his career.
With one of fashion’s most prolific creators now going it out alone, whispers have already begun surrounding where Galliano is heading or what exactly he is doing next. “The rumours… Everyone wants to know, and everyone wants to dream,” wrote Galliano in his statement. “When the time is right, all will be revealed. For now, I take this time to express my immense gratitude. I continue to atone, and I will never stop dreaming. I, too, need to dream.” What a decade it’s been.
Photograph taken from ‘High & Low – John Galliano’ (2023).
