Leila > Recent Status Updates

“Butterflies in my stomach, not from nerves, but from the immense excitement I had witnessed. I was part of fashion history, working for a company that wanted my point of view and my opinion… My heart was beating in continued acceleration. This was what I had dreamed of, but I had never dared to believe I would be in this exalted position so young, so naive, so innocent”

“Halston used to have me over for dinner… and he would serve a baked potato with caviar and sour cream. For dessert, a small mountain of high class cocaine served in an Elsa Peretti sterling silver bowl”

“Most of the fashion elite, including the top tier designers… were working, loving, and living on a regular diet of cocaine. Then the drug du jour. Everyone was high on coke and cock” obsessed w his manner of speaking

Betty Catroux

“‘Fashion is fun, and you can’t really take it too seriously. Frivolity must be an integral form’ Karl said to me”

Fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez

“The clothes were surreal and sophisticated but, most important, they were youthful and inspired. This was represented in Karl’s approach to the Chloe fashion shows. They purposefully didn’t have an assigned lineup of models and outfits. Backstage, Karl would tell the models to pick whatever they wanted to wear from the rack… after the show, he’d tell the models to keep what they’d worn”

“Pret a porter aka ready to wear was taking off, and Karl always had a knack for delivering bizarrely innovative clothes that were acclaimed by retailers and press alike… His jewelry could be big, plastic, red roosters or chickens, or plastic magic marker colored tulips on a necklace over a luxurious foundation”

Spending his stipend from Brown on YSL

“I hope you find my glorious and somehow triumphant crawls through the chiffon trenches to be fierce and fearless… Physically, I am a huge galleon slowly sailing into harbor. Broken from so many battles, but still I rise and continue to express myself with articulation, eloquence, and respect. I bow down to no one and find my way through the memory of what has been good in this life, which is not yet finished”

“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.’”