Dior's holy trinity
Here is a slightly condensed review of the reigning King. We get to see Galliano's,for Christian Dior, consumer friendly side. There is Dr. Jeckle which would be Dior's RTW collections, and then there is Mr. Hyde, which would be Dior's Couture collections. Both are brilliant and not only thought provoking but are testament to the best in design.
This Spring RTW collection seems at first glance to pale in comparison to the last 5 years of Dior's collections, but once you get past the normalcy of the "look" and styling of the runway show, what is left is just as on par as his past RTW collections.
Also upon closer look you can also see the tying thread that Dior usually has from the Couture to Rtw collections. Where we saw the late middle-ages suits of armor and the court players in the Fall 06 Couture Collection, we see the remnants of the drape from the court ladies dresses, the construction from the suits of armor, and even some chain mail to tie it all together. To bring this collection down the runway, Galliano had the models in what can only be described as the Joan of Arc look. It was great, here are a great number of my highlights:
(from style.com)
(click here to view video coverage of Dior's Sprint RTW Collection courtesy of style.com)
Here's a recap of Dior's highlights from the rest of this year which include:
Dior Haut Cutoure Fall 2006 and Dior's Fall RTW 2006 Collections.
Dior Haut Cutoure Fall 2006
PARIS, July 5, 2006 – Let us not be so prosaic as to ask exactly what Joan of Arc, Siouxsie Sioux, Botticelli, and the forties French film actress Arletty may have to do with one another—we’ve arrived in the parallel universe known as John Galliano’s Christian Dior. So, on with the show!
It’s a parade of medieval warrior-women in gilded chain mail, copper verdigris gowns, and glass diadems, each equipped with an armored sleeve. It’s a bizarre troupe of goth-punks in outsize black-and-red folded 3-D shapes fashioned from trash-bag plastic. It’s a mincing line of forties ladies in pea-green and magenta doublet-jacketed crepe suits sporting lobster parts for hats. And then it’s a perambulating collection of Tuscan topiary, with pennants and trumpets poking out atop.All this—and, be assured, there was more—played out against the backdrop of a Renaissance garden underneath a sky that alternated between blood-red storm clouds and a spinning astrological wheel taken from an illuminated manuscript.
Such historicist games, richly yet randomly referenced, are, of course, part of the perverse delight of any John Galliano presentation. This season, the connecting threads of his allusions even managed to make sense in places. He refined the dark-ages militarism that appeared earlier on Dior's ready-to-wear runway, explored the parallels between doublet and hose and tunics and leggings, and hinted at a surrealist subtext that seems a pretty apt response to the here and now.
Between the theatrics, there were also some amazingly covetable draped gowns in sugarplum, white, and peach. These showed up just before the finale: Galliano dropping in to take his bow, dressed as a spaceman. – Sarah Mower style.com.
(click here for runway video coverage of Dior's Fall 2006 Haute Cutoure 2006 Collection courtesy of elle.com)
Dior 2006 Fall RTW Collection
PARIS, February 28, 2006 – Kerrang! The Christian Dior woman has turned into a goth-metal rock chick, all black bandana, major shades, fur-sprouting distressed leathers and stompin' medieval biker boots. With Pat Benatar and Bon Jovi on the soundtrack, and a front row that included Kate Hudson and Black Crowes hubby Chris Robinson, John Galliano turned the ultra-establishment Grand Palais de Paris into a fashion-rock stadium for the night. (Well, 20 minutes of it).
For anyone with an eye for recent history, this was Galliano up to familiar tricks. The identically wigged, long-haired rocker women on the runway were—stylistically at least—slightly more contemporary sisters to the blood-spattered nineteenth-century zealots who appeared in Dior's French Revolutionary haute couture show for spring. This fall collection made the trickle-down effect from fantasy to nuts-and-bolts ready-to-wear more understandable than in seasons past. Galliano's voluminous, floor-sweeping coats with huge, shaggy goat-hair tufts escaping from their seams, and his neat jackets, decorated with vertical strips of fur, will translate into plenty of sellable pieces for the boutiques of the world to carry.
More surprisingly, but just as cleverly, Galliano also slipped in references to Christian Dior's 1947 New Look jacket—here in a peplumed shape, or covered with tulle in the front. Those suits, with their artfully tattered and embroidered surfaces and second-skin pencil skirts, have a certain delicacy that is guaranteed to register with the more hyper-feminine Dior customer Galliano knows so well. Oddly enough, they also made a connection with the eighties power suit; a look that is preoccupying the young—and the not-so-young—on Planet Fashion this season. – Sarah Mower
(click here for runway video coverage on Dior's Fall RTW 2006 Collection courtesy of style.com)
