John Galliano's Maison Margiela Triumph Was Just One Of His Many Unforgettable Shows

I did not expect the response.

It was so great to see the whole world become obsessed.

No, I've never experienced a show that goes viral.

[reels clicking]

That's the first time, I think.

[gentle uplifting piano music]

The first time I met John Galliano,

I saw him across the room.

I thought I can't allow this moment to pass.

It was one of those nights I was leaving a club with Kate.

All fine, all fine.

And then this Gwendoline came out

from the bowels of the club.

And I remember Alexis was with us and I was like,

Who's that? Who's that?

And jumped in the club just a bit,

but never forgot that image.

John's work has been hugely influential to me

since I was a teenager,

and John was extraordinarily kind

and said that he hoped that we would work together one day.

I've been a fan of Gwendoline's for a long, long time.

She didn't know.

And I think in one of those banters we were having,

I said, You know we've met before.

And she went completely red.

She went, Oh, I thought you would never,

you'd forgotten that and you...

It was quite sweet.

This is the first time I've walked

in one of John Galliano's shows.

Even saying that feels so bizarre.

She put the time in.

She came in for the fittings three or four times,

trips to London,

sous-vetements, the undergarments, the corset training,

and created the dress on her, really.

It's really influenced me more greatly

than perhaps I can even convey.

Wild imagination but coupled with real craftsmanship.

Those things coming together and creating true artistry.

[gentle dreamy music]

Well, my research books,

I love the way they're all kenned up

like little butterflies.

You can help yourself.

You can flick through

and you see there's research on dolls,

van Dongen is some of the makeup ideas that we played with

and the colors.

Over here, it's like a cabinet of curiosity.

So we have the Juliette corset,

the Ethel corset, the cincher,

and these are for boys and girls.

[page rustles] [gentle dreamy music]

Happy to discuss some of the newness, if you like,

or some of the new techniques.

Retrograding,

the idea that you could almost treat

the subject wearing the dress like a line drawing.

So imagine you start with just a crayon at the top

and that crayon becomes more intense

as you get to the waist.

Then through color and fabric,

and a retrograde of techniques,

you build up the three dimensionality of that dress.

It was like degrade?

So degrade day of line, degrade of technique,

degrade of textures.

When I saw the collection,

I saw quite how beautiful it was.

The innovation with the fabrics,

the narrative, the storytelling, the emotion.

When I saw all of those things,

it connected back to what his work has brought me.

At that level of dressmaking,

which is the highest form of dressmaking,

just once a year,

because of the time.

It involves the structures,

the substructures, and the engineering,

especially building a dress on a redefined body shape.

That's what I wanted to do.

It was inspired by many references.

I looked at the Brassai photographs.

That's what he talked about.

And I knew those photographs very well

because I'd been quite obsessed with them

when I was around 20.

They used to stare at those photographs

and think about who the people were,

and what the stories were, what had been happening.

Once we had redefined the body shape,

it was only then that I could start to build the dress.

So it always had to come back to that waist measurement.

A corset, otherwise the dress wouldn't fit.

[soft reflective music]

I'd already started to work

with curvier girls on couture private orders.

I wanted to do that more so I embraced it.

I absolutely embraced it.

The casting was all-inclusive.

I thought the casting was spectacular.

I thought it was really great

because we saw so many different types of people.

What was incredibly modern about the show

was that it was exploring a totally different silhouette

from one we're used to seeing.

The different morphology.

It was just so exciting and so challenging.

Everything was, you know, you had to find an answer.

You had to work it out.

I am extremely tall and I'm certainly not sample size,

and I thought it was beautifully radical for John

to amplify and intensify my size

and my proportions,

and change them and really be extreme

about what I am and who I am.

[soft playful music]

Well, Pat McGrath is also a genius.

I know that can be an overused phrase,

but it's used rightfully so.

With Pat, we became friends

because she found me in a nightclub years ago,

and I was wearing a look of hers and she said,

I love your makeup. I want to take a photograph of you.

At that time, I didn't know what Pat McGrath looked like,

so just this woman had taken a photograph of me.

We talked about makeup and afterwards,

someone said, That was Pat McGrath.

And I went, No! [laughs]

I really missed out on a huge moment.

[soft dramatic ambient music]

Well, I remember it was early January and we...

You know, I had my briefing

and then John just told me this amazing story.

You know, we were gonna be under a bridge.

He showed me the lighting

and then also showed me all of these incredible characters

with such incredible detail.

And then John showed me this porcelain doll

and was like, I'd love to take it to glass skin.

So instantly, I knew we were gonna have

to find something completely new and different.

I knew we were gonna have to take it there.

We'd been working on something

that we call Margiela's skin for a long time now.

One of the inspirations was the China doll.

So it's something we had gradually been working towards,

but here was the opportunity to really go for it.

So I said, Let's go for it.

Once you're told you have to do a new skin

that has never existed before,

you know you have to develop something

that is out of this world.

We started with the look, the look was kind of more matte.

We kept trying to add more shine,

but to me,

it looked like something we'd already seen before.

It was all about the designs, the weight.

How do you make skin look like porcelain?

It was really measured and how the makeup is applied

and the lightness.

And like we said,

we couldn't do anything that was clown white.

It had to be very subtle.

That took a lot of working up,

just from the point of view of timing.

So I think to begin though, there was seven layers.

Seven layers, and the effect was just like, wow.

You know, when the boys and girls walked here,

we were just like blown over.

We went into the Margiela offices

and then we showed the first look with the new glass skin,

and everybody was standing ovation by the whole team.

To come into this Margiela show

and see that she had pushed the boundaries even further.

She had taken the idea of a filter,

which is obviously AI and digital,

she'd taken something from the digital realm

and brought it into the physical realm.

This is something entirely new.

[gentle graceful music]

Very soon I realized that, you know,

with the undergarments that we were using,

and the corsetry, and the hair, and the makeup,

that we actually needed a military-style planning

to get all my muses ready on time.

So I said,

You know, can you cut off some of the time, Pat?

Can you bring it down? Can you bring it down?

So she went back, studiously, with her team,

and they got it down, and then they got it down again.

In the end, I will say, with the team and myself,

they had it down to around half an hour

'cause we had to be quick.

We cannot be late.

Really and truly,

I would say that the look could take

about an hour and a half.

[photos clicking] [gentle electrifying music]

I think when I started,

I'd already planned it out upstairs where we normally show,

and then it suddenly dawned on us that we'd run out of space

to do it indoors.

I actually discovered that place

on one of my early morning jogs,

then inquired if it was possible to do something there,

and I was told no and then got a no again.

Then the more I couldn't get it, the more I wanted it,

you know how it is.

'Cause I just love the address.

The idea that we'd invite our guests

to this fantastic address and then take them downstairs

to this dank, kind of, underbelly under the bridge

with the sound of the river, [water babbling]

the ebb and the flow,

and that muffled sound of cars and people above the bridge

and oh, it was like the audio [water swooshes]

that I needed for my characters.

Something in my work as an actress

is that when I go on set,

I want to be in a world

and I'll do whatever I can to create that world.

And often I'll need to use my imagination to its fullest

to really immerse in that world.

But with what John had created,

I didn't have to so much do that work.

Oh, it'd be fab to actually have them look

like they're coming back from a night out or whatever.

There was a bit of a vampire story underneath all that too.

They had to get back before midnight.

[gentle heartwarming music]

I did not expect the response

to be as big as it was at all.

I did not think there would be this tsunami

of absolute love.

It was so great to see the whole world become obsessed,

trying to make this glass skin.

And it was, like I said, it was heartwarming.

It was beautiful to see.

And at the same time, I was shocked.

The reaction after, I mean, normally I just, you know,

I grab my dogs and I'm out and in the car,

but I was informed that something had gone down.

Yes, the kids that were dressing up with pillows

and dad's coats and doing the Leon Walk.

And as a designer,

you want to inspire the young ones and the young kids.

You know, it's amazing to get reviews,

but to actually, you know, leave one of these venues,

go home and you see a kid

has switched his raincoat back to front,

charging down the street,

and you think, yeah, I've done something here,

that makes me really happy.

But you know what was amazing

was that a few of my friends said,

Gwen, imagine all those kids being inspired

by Galliano's show like we were growing up

and the impact that that had on us.

Imagine it happening again.

[gentle fulfilling music]

That's how shows used to be, no?

You go and you get inspired to do it yourself

with whatever you had with you.

It would just inspire you.

So I think that's good enough to hit, I think.

I'm a fan of fashion. I love fashion.

As a child, that was my day out,

was to go to department stores,

look at collections with my mother.

And for me to actually live this and see the things I see.

I bring that inspiration and my passion into all of my work,

and also to see how everyone works together

as teams, everybody.

It's incredible.

It's beyond dreams.

[gentle fulfilling music]