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During his time as a student at London’s Central Saint Martins, Gibraltar-born British fashion designer John Galliano worked as a dresser at the National Theatre, learning the art of costume and the power of illusion. As a regular in London nightclubs, Galliano met a coterie of artists and colorful personalities, forging strong ties with kindred spirits who would play a decisive role in his career – among which Stephen Jones, who would become Dior’s milliner.
Following the success of his own brand (founded in 1984,) he was appointed Creative Director of ready-to-wear and haute couture at Givenchy in 1995, before joining Dior in 1996 as Artistic Director of the women’s collections. There, he distinguished himself with his extravagant shows that combined eclectic historical and cultural inspirations – a global kaleidoscope of references and unbridled inventiveness, imbued with romanticism and history. The designer’s sensitivity for haute couture know-how and innate sense of the spectacular has garnered him a reputation as a master of the silhouette.
John Galliano has truly reinvented the art – and the very role – of haute couture, redefining its tropes into a new type of contemporary fashion that combines the influences of his travels – whether real or born of his imagination – and the bountiful heritage of Christian Dior. This book highlights the exceptional silhouettes he created for Dior collection after collection from 1996 to 2011, through his most emblematic models, as photographed by Laziz Hamani, alongside shots by Steven Meisel, Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn and Paolo Roversi. This singular odyssey is the fifth volume in a new series of books paying tribute to the House’s Artistic Directors.
Curator of the Costume Institute at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Andrew Bolton has been the force behind some of the Met’s most visited exhibitions, including Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (2011), China: Through the Looking Glass (2015), Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology (2016), and Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and Catholic Imagination (2018). He has written several books, spoken at various conferences, and contributed to numerous publications. Andrew Bolton has received several awards, including recently the Vilcek Foundation Prize in Fashion in 2015 and the Lord & Taylor Fashion Oracle award in 2016. Before joining the Met in 2002, he worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Laziz Hamani’s passion for photography and constant quest for aesthetics and meaning led him to collaborate with prestigious luxury houses as well as with Assouline Editions, for which he has produced over thirty books. From the most delicate details of haute couture to the purity of minimalist design, Hamani proposes a visual dialogue that allows us to fully grasp the power of beauty, through a simplicity that is all his own.