Leila > Recent Status Updates

“There is no place for ‘The Birds’ or the São Schlumberger show. That there is no poetry. No heart. No angst. It’s just business” bro not to be annoying but you can’t give me a more uplifting ending? Or something more personal about either of them? Or something? Just feels like she really did not stick the landing here.

“In the 30 years since Galliano presented his breakthrough degree collection and started his tiny company, with two primarily handmade collections a year, fashion has grown into a monolith that has no time or patience for imaginative young designers or small businesses.” Well damn!

Just an absolutely devastating loss. A man who had such talent, such compassion. Crying whilst reading, just a terrible horrible thing

“McQueen draped and cut more than half the dresses [for Plato’s Altantis show] himself, and hardly made a mistake—a technical feat that few in fashion could achieve. ‘He came alive when he was fitting clothes,’ [Burton] later said. ‘He made you feel like you might as well pack your bags and go home.’”

“McQueen’s drug taking had reached epic proportions, he was suffering from drug-induced hallucination, telling people that shoot out from underneath his bed, and he was still raving about a man sexually abusing his as he slept. Ungless was stunned…‘Can’t somebody do an intervention?’…No one in London did anything.”

TOTALLY DID NOT REALIZE THAT SARAH HEARD HIS ASSISTANT = SARAH BURTON WHO IS NOW HEAD OF GIVENCHY

VOSS collection: “engraved red Venetian glass corset, worn with a black pencil skirt. And for the closing look, a sleeveless gown with a bodice made of blood red stained glass microscope slides and a skirt of red and black ostrich plumes”

Having a real hard time believing this narrative they want to push that Galliano was an ass but not an antisemite. FW 2000-2001 couture “One outfit, of a military officer, was originally accessorized with a Nazi SS cap; when Toledanl saw it during the rehearsal, he asked Galliano to remove it from the show. Galliano complied.”

Galliano making a collection with models cosplaying as homeless people… and straitjacket wearing asylum patients… “How did Galliano ever believe it would be socially or morally okay to make $100,000 dresses inspired by the homeless and mentally ill?”

I had no clue about the scale of this Domenico de Sole and Tom Ford vs LVMH/Arnault drama! Incredible! And that they avoided LVMH takeover (in part) via an employee stock ownership plan!

Initial discussion of McQueen’s infatuation of the 1987 Galliano shellfish dress for Blanche DuBois collection

Need to watch this McQueen Charlie Rose interview

Jan 1997 Arnault totally changes the game on couture week, becomes a huge marketing opportunity instead of a stuffy event for buyers/clients

McQueen visiting Jurnjack, who he had hired for wigs for a show and trusted implicitly (as he often did with artists) to create as they saw fit within the theme of the show. “One day, they came by the studio to see what he had designed. ‘Lee looked at the pieces and … pulled out two hundred or three hundred in cash, and said, ‘Stop. Take a break. It’s sublime. Go out and celebrate’”

Germaine “Mitzah” Bricard a classic Dior muse

“Dior and Broussard steered the company into an unparalleled success: two years after its debut, the house of Dior accounted for 75 percent of French fashion exports and 5 percent of all French exports”

McQueen SS97 “La Poupée”

Bro you are an ass “Galliano had no patience or mercy for Harlech’s troubles. He told Duos at the Passage du Cheval Blanc: ‘You know how women are. She’s crazy and she’s so nasty and so demanding’ … ‘Amanda was getting treated like she was nobody,’ Talley says. ‘It just sounded horrific.’” And then Talley gets her a gig at Dior. An angel

On Galliano to Givenchy: “‘He has a wonderful imagination, but I am not sure that technically he knows everything about how to make a dress,’ Valentino said. ‘John is a genius,’ said Gianni Versace. ‘But he needs some control.’”

Andre Leon Talley once again seeming like a sweetheart and an icon

Galliano totally screwed Harlech over. Yes, McQueen also could’ve been better to Blow - but there’s a more mutual blame and lack of reaching out on her part, plus her role was a bit different. Harlech situation feels very clear and Galliano totally screwed her

On photojournalism/photography vs fashion: “‘it was like he realized that he was really, really good at something but it wasn’t the thing he wanted to be good at, which must have been frustrating… like a concert pianist who wants to be able to play tennis. Hating the gift you’ve been given’”

1996-1997 FW inspired by photojournalist Don McCullin war photographer, 19th century artist Gustave Doré’s illustration for Dante’s Inferno, and choreographer who designed a dance based on Inferno

Sunday Times Magazine writer Colin McDowell “What McQueen has he shares with Man Ray and Magritte - the wit and awareness to take the present and catapult it into the future before anyone knows what he is up to. That is where his strength lies… [he] understands that the new feminists is more about giving the finger than it is about moving along in court shoes like a 1950s deb”

Regarding the worm corset look from SS96 “that, in one look, was exactly what McQueen was about: he wanted the viewer to feel uncomfortable, to question conventional beauty, to respect nature, and to be confronted by the eventuality of death”

“‘I wanted to give London a kick and a shout. ‘Let’s get on with the creativity’ … The frock coats, which, he explained, were ‘cut in a sixteenth century method based on architecture, on a horizon point, so you get a flat surface that swings away. I mean I was a technologist before designed and a constructionist before I was a technologist. That’s the way I work, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle”

“If Galliano was a romantic, McQueen was a pornographer… he didn’t believe in frontiers. He didn’t believe anything was off-limits. Nothing was taboo. He accepted the brutality of human nature, didn’t try to suppress it”

Bro McQueen was so preternaturally talented it is actually crazy. Cannot believe we lost such a talent so young

“To his surprise, [McQueen] scored an appointment with Margiela in person, and when they met, Margiela said he thought McQueen was too talented to work as an intern and told him to return to London and start his own company. Instead, he went to see [JPG] but “there was this queen at the desk who said, ‘You don’t have an appointment’ … so I said, ‘Forget this,’ and went back to London”

Between the obvious hatred for curves “they ruin the line”, initial refusal to fit on actual women and using his own body instead, casting models as young as 14, and statement that “women don’t want to look aggressive… what I design reflects the look of fresh young girls”…. There’s a very strange adult woman aversion and obsession w youth…