Christian Dior Haute Couture F/W 1997.98 Paris

[kingtheyskens]

That was such an experience ! I miss this type of extravagance and opulence. The clothes are sooooo beautiful.

b-b-b-but daniel roseberry... b-b-b-but schiaparelli!

Spoiler

(joking)

 

[Salvatore]

b-b-b-but daniel roseberry... b-b-b-but schiaparelli!

Spoiler

(joking)

Haha, he's the closest thing we've got to this, but it's still lightyears apart. With these old Dior shows, it was not only the clothes, but the hair, makeup, set, music, and skilled models all came together in such a perfect way to show off these pieces.

John's late 90´s Dior was perfect and I wish he had continued more with this, even if I enjoyed the « Drag Queen » years of the early 2000s. Maybe we will have another great fashion era like this.

 

[kingtheyskens]

Haha, he's the closest thing we've got to this, but it's still lightyears apart. With these old Dior shows, it was not only the clothes, but the hair, makeup, set, music, and skilled models all came together in such a perfect way to show off these pieces.

John's late 90´s Dior was perfect and I wish he had continued more with this, even if I enjoyed the « Drag Queen » years of the early 2000s. Maybe we will have another great fashion era like this.

the dior borehouse years (2008-2011) were more drag queen than the early 2000s. i think his work in the early 2000s was some of his most creative and experimental.

as for daniel.. he's a total charlatan lol

 

[Salvatore]

the dior borehouse years (2008-2011) were more drag queen than the early 2000s. i think his work in the early 2000s was some of his most creative and experimental.

as for daniel.. he's a total charlatan lol

True. I hated John's final years at Dior so much. The death of Steven Robinson really affected John, not to mention the collections.

 

[kingtheyskens]

True. I hated John's final years at Dior so much. The death of Steven Robinson really affected John, not to mention the collections.

i think planet botticelli (hc aw2006) was his last truly great collection at dior. madame butterfly, which came afterwards, was good but it marked the beginning of the end for him. and then the 50th anniversary versailles show was just the final nail in the coffin. everything that followed was a giant costumey mess

 

[Avonlea]

Haha, he's the closest thing we've got to this, but it's still lightyears apart. With these old Dior shows, it was not only the clothes, but the hair, makeup, set, music, and skilled models all came together in such a perfect way to show off these pieces.

It's impossible with the models we have nowadays. Most of these girls can't even walk straight, and when asked to convey anything, they do it in such a contrived manner. The results always look ridiculous. Galliano's last couture show for Margiela felt like a parody, with the models trying so hard and failing miserably. Nowadays it's either zombie walk or something straight out of a drag race.

I also believe that livestream and influencers with faces in their phones would instantly kill the atmosphere. I can't imagine a show like this having the same impact in the age of social media and throwaway content. Is it even worth trying, considering the decreasing attention span and everyone's brains getting fried by digital overload?

 

[kingtheyskens]

It's impossible with the models we have nowadays. Most of these girls can't even walk straight, and when asked to convey anything, they do it in such a contrived manner. The results always look ridiculous. Galliano's last couture show for Margiela felt like a parody, with the models trying so hard and failing miserably. Nowadays it's either zombie walk or something straight out of a drag race.

I also believe that livestream and influencers with faces in their phones would instantly kill the atmosphere. I can't imagine a show like this having the same impact in the age of social media and throwaway content. Is it even worth trying, considering the decreasing attention span and everyone's brains getting fried by digital overload?

agreed on every front. the modelling industry is dying a fast but excruciatingly painful death. and yes... the less said about that last horrid artisanal show, the better lol. i've been cursed with that woeful image of gwendoline christie prancing around like a drunk showgirl ever since

 

[vogue22]

Haha, he's the closest thing we've got to this, but it's still lightyears apart. With these old Dior shows, it was not only the clothes, but the hair, makeup, set, music, and skilled models all came together in such a perfect way to show off these pieces.

John's late 90´s Dior was perfect and I wish he had continued more with this, even if I enjoyed the « Drag Queen » years of the early 2000s. Maybe we will have another great fashion era like this.

The couture divas : Natalia Semanova, Ling Tan, Erin O’Connor, Anneliese Seubert, Yasmeen, Carla Bruni, and so many more had an unmatched grace and skill in selling the fantasy of couture to the elite, the models today simply can’t compare to their talent and presence on the runway.

 

[kingtheyskens]

those models, and the ones that crashed the scene in the early 2000s, were simply on an another level. they were otherworldly beings, almost alien in how beautiful and effortless they looked. the models we have now are goblins in comparison

 

[Lola701]

Maybe we will have another great fashion era like this.

No and we shouldn’t expect or want this.
It’s going to be different, always and comparing it to the past will prevent you to fully enjoy the present.

Daniel Roseberry’s work is very much relevant to the time while being a continuation of what we saw in the past.

The beauty I think of our time is that Couture clients can wear fashion from the runway. Those Galliano clothes were so heavily edited for clients that sometimes the magic of those collections was lost lol.

 

[Salvatore]

No and we shouldn’t expect or want this.
It’s going to be different, always and comparing it to the past will prevent you to fully enjoy the present.

Daniel Roseberry’s work is very much relevant to the time while being a continuation of what we saw in the past.

The beauty I think of our time is that Couture clients can wear fashion from the runway. Those Galliano clothes were so heavily edited for clients that sometimes the magic of those collections was lost lol.

What I mean is to have a time where fashion was beautiful, exciting, and exhilarating. A time where mediocrity was frowned upon, not celebrated, and that goes for everyone—from the designers to the stylists to the models. It felt competitive in a good way, but now everyone is the same and not take risks. Yes, Daniel is doing a great job, yet I am always feeling like something is missing. The industry as a whole needs a jolt of lightning to wake it up.

 

[kingtheyskens]

No and we shouldn’t expect or want this.
It’s going to be different, always and comparing it to the past will prevent you to fully enjoy the present.

Daniel Roseberry’s work is very much relevant to the time while being a continuation of what we saw in the past.

The beauty I think of our time is that Couture clients can wear fashion from the runway. Those Galliano clothes were so heavily edited for clients that sometimes the magic of those collections was lost lol.

daniel roseberry's work is not relevant. nobody is wearing those clothes except for celebrities on red carpets. meanwhile, women across the world wore slip dresses in the 90s. if you're content with the current mediocrity in the fashion industry then that's fine - you do you - but don't discourage other people from wanting some of that magic back lol

 

[Lola701]

daniel roseberry's work is not relevant. nobody is wearing those clothes except for celebrities on red carpets. meanwhile, women across the world wore slip dresses in the 90s. if you're content with the current mediocrity in the fashion industry then that's fine - you do you - but don't discourage other people from wanting some of that magic back lol

Im a realist. And as I love to say, we have the fashion we deserve. Good or bad it’s a matter of appreciation that has almost nothing to do with our opinion.
Much of fashion is context. No matter how nostalgic some people are, an era like the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s or 00’s will never ever be replicated…And that in terms of talents, content, culture and everything.

I was lucky to experience fashion in the 00’s as an insider and also attending shows and things like that. I often talk about this for example with Margiela. Nobody knew what Margiela’s influence would have been in the 2010 or 2020s. Margiela even left with a relative indifference. What people consider legendary shows today were just an expression of a talent back then. People talked about the great shows of Martin in the 90’s. People wore Margiela in the industry but it was just that.

Daniel Roseberry is relevant today. What he does is work by a certain type of women, has an influence on culture and it doesn’t have to be big to exist.

When Galliano and McQueen became big in Paris, except for Karl and Valentino, they were dismissed by a lot of Couturiers who called them costumiers. Today nobody would question their position alongside the names that dismissed them.

Galliano’s biais cut dresses made news with his breakthrough 1994 collection. Slip dresses became big in the late 90’s, when the minimalism became more prevalent in the streets (relatively). But the movement of minimalism and what the biais cut represented for women (and easy dress to wear) couldn’t be more different from what Galliano’s world and intention was. That trickled down effect of fashion has nothing to do with relevance.

Because the era where Galliano was really relevant was the 00’s and it maximalism when his campaigns made news, when his collections generated protest, his clothes were in movies, in tv series, music videos. I don’t think women were wearing biais cut dresses anymore. It was more low rise jeans and I don’t think a lot of people grew up with women wearing and Galliano in their neighborhood either.

For me Schiaparelli is the maximalist drama of today much like Galliano and others were in the past. I think in the 80’s it was the Montana and Mugler. Yes it doesn’t have the same wit or culture but it’s in the same tradition.

And it’s not about being content with the current of the industry. It’s about being totally aware that the present and the future will never be like the past. It will never top the best of the past. It can only be the best of it time.
And I do enjoy a lot of things today maybe because I’m thinking like this. Not everything is mediocre and not everything was fantastic then.

 

[kingtheyskens]

Im a realist. And as I love to say, we have the fashion we deserve. Good or bad it’s a matter of appreciation that has almost nothing to do with our opinion.
Much of fashion is context. No matter how nostalgic some people are, an era like the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s or 00’s will never ever be replicated…And that in terms of talents, content, culture and everything.

I was lucky to experience fashion in the 00’s as an insider and also attending shows and things like that. I often talk about this for example with Margiela. Nobody knew what Margiela’s influence would have been in the 2010 or 2020s. Margiela even left with a relative indifference. What people consider legendary shows today were just an expression of a talent back then. People talked about the great shows of Martin in the 90’s. People wore Margiela in the industry but it was just that.

Daniel Roseberry is relevant today. What he does is work by a certain type of women, has an influence on culture and it doesn’t have to be big to exist.

When Galliano and McQueen became big in Paris, except for Karl and Valentino, they were dismissed by a lot of Couturiers who called them costumiers. Today nobody would question their position alongside the names that dismissed them.

Galliano’s biais cut dresses made news with his breakthrough 1994 collection. Slip dresses became big in the late 90’s, when the minimalism became more prevalent in the streets (relatively). But the movement of minimalism and what the biais cut represented for women (and easy dress to wear) couldn’t be more different from what Galliano’s world and intention was. That trickled down effect of fashion has nothing to do with relevance.

Because the era where Galliano was really relevant was the 00’s and it maximalism when his campaigns made news, when his collections generated protest, his clothes were in movies, in tv series, music videos. I don’t think women were wearing biais cut dresses anymore. It was more low rise jeans and I don’t think a lot of people grew up with women wearing and Galliano in their neighborhood either.

For me Schiaparelli is the maximalist drama of today much like Galliano and others were in the past. I think in the 80’s it was the Montana and Mugler. Yes it doesn’t have the same wit or culture but it’s in the same tradition.

And it’s not about being content with the current of the industry. It’s about being totally aware that the present and the future will never be like the past. It will never top the best of the past. It can only be the best of it time.
And I do enjoy a lot of things today maybe because I’m thinking like this. Not everything is mediocre and not everything was fantastic then.

i don't think we ought to 'appreciate' how terrible fashion is right now, simply because that's how fashion 'is' at the moment. i don't tend to subscribe to that kind of fatalistic mindset. i'd much rather direct my energies towards solutions that might improve the state of the industry, as opposed to resigning myself to the way it is right now and being content with no progress.

as for daniel roseberry, there is no metric apart from social media whereby he could be considered relevant. the breadth of his appeal as a designer is limited to just that digital sphere, since not a single woman is wearing those clothes outside of red carpets and fashion events. the schiaparelli brand is currently operating at a loss, with only one full boutique in the whole world (on the place vendôme). daniel's brand of maximalism is only embraced on digital forums like twitter, tiktok, instagram and the like.

the brand doesn't have the commercial scope to be relevant and as such it cannot be relevant to the way people are dressing today. as for influence, there is perhaps only one or two designers who are currently majorly influenced by daniel's gaudy/'maximalist' approach to fashion, and there's a compelling argument to be made that one of those two (olivier rousteing) has been filling that role in fashion since before daniel was even considered for the schiaparelli appointment.

the truly relevant designers today are the minimalists who extended the tradition that phoebe philo laid in the early 2000s; among them are matthieu blazy, the olsen twins, philo herself - of course - and raf simons. jonathan anderson could perhaps be considered the most relevant designer overall, as ultimately his faux-intellectual approach to fashion, paired with his basic pattern-cutting skills, appeal to both the art crowd and the minimalist crowd. he's also seen resounding commerical success at loewe, as has blazy.

these designers encapsulate competing but related elements of the zeitgeist in fashion right now. quiet luxury, minimalism, fashion as art curation. their approaches to fashion are monotonous, uninspiring and bland, but they are the ones pushing fashion forward. certainly. i'm not adopting a teleological approach to fashion history here, because that would mean progress and since progress is ultimately 'good', i can't judge fashion's current direction as 'good' because it isn't. however, that's the spirit of the (recessionary) times.

daniel, on the other hand, works totally against time. his design philosophy at schiaparelli represents a moribund approach to fashion that has been expired for some time now. notwithstanding the painfully obvious fact that most of what he does there has nothing to do with the work of elsa schiaparelli at all, especially in terms of line and silhouette, most of his creations are merely derivative retreads of those designers whom you mentioned yourself (montana, mugler), among several others (gaultier, lacroix, saint laurent, and to an extent, mcqueen and galliano).

he is not pushing fashion forward because his idea of 'maximalism' is so firmly rooted in the past that he can't create anything that is actually new. all the silhouettes, ideas and sensibilities found in his work can be located in the oeuvres of the those superior talents mentioned above. the only difference is that daniel's approach rings hollow. there's no depth, no joy and, as you rightfully pointed out, no wit and culture. it is therefore caricature, but the caricature is presented as sincerity, which makes it definitively anti-modern.

his work is not a reflection of the times but in fact a repudiation of the times. and for that reason alone, it cannot be relevant. the designers we celebrate on here (galliano, mcqueen, etc.) were groundbreaking precisely because they either anticipated or reflected the spirit of the times in their work. they may not have been lauded as geniuses then, but they are now.

conversely, daniel is being lauded as a genius at the beginning of his fashion career already, simply because a generation that doesn't know any better has been drawn in by his brand of faux-maximalism. it only serves to reaffirm the fact that he's a pretender, and fashion history will show that soon enough.

 

[kingtheyskens]

as for the question of mediocrity in fashion right now, i think you'd be hard pressed to find a decent argument for fashion being better now than it was twenty or thirty years ago. global fashion education has been irrevocably tarnished over the last decade because of tutors' emphasis on boundless creativity. fashion design students are not learning how to actually design and construct clothing that is both pragmatic and also desirable. fashion journalists are not honest in their critiques of the industry as it is now, whereas thirty/twenty years ago they were tearing our favourite designers to shreds in balanced but critical musings.

i think if we want to make fashion better, the solutions start with forgoing toxic positivity and admitting that everything in fashion is worse now.

 

[Lola701]

^^
I can say that the industry is worse now. I can say that overall the level has decreased but I can’t say that fashion is worse now. I’m sorry.
I can’t say it’s better the same way I can’t say it’s worse.
My appreciation for fashion evolves overtime. I’m turning 40 this year, I’m a different woman than I was when I got in the industry in my teenage years.
There are things that touches me in fashion in general and that are always respond too but everything has changed.

I’m always optimistic than fashion will be better. I don’t know if it will but it will be different. Now the industry is forced to change and to gamble on creativity again because for the past 5 years, commerce only ruled.

And to tie or conversation around John’s work at Dior. Galliano at Dior was a response to years of conservatism and classicism from Ferre and for a lot of esteemed fashion house. It was also a direct response to the success of Tom Ford at Gucci. At that time, the response was dream and extravaganza. There was a total creative freedom but also a shield for creative who weren’t subject to public scrutiny. Everything was possible under the spectre of expression of creativity. Today it’s not the same. There’s a responsibility that is expected from designers that has never existed before.

 

[Mrs.T]

I miss this type of fashion, models were skilled and actually showed the clothes and themselves while main focus was on the clothes

 

[blueorchid]

I find these discussions about the "future" of fashion or why fashion is so "poor" these days to be difficult to have without going around in circles. Personally, I can't really picture how fashion can get "better," but I also think there were lulls in the past with regards to fashion, too. Personally, I loathe the late 80s and early 90s for fashion... and it somehow got better... but I think a lot of it comes down to how the business itself is a business about the bottom line and not necessarily about "creativity" or "quality" anymore. Things always change. Not to make the Galliano stans upset, but fashion isn't all about *high fashion* or *couture* (yeah yeah democratization of fashion = bad, dogwhistle lol, not that boring discussion again). On some smaller levels, it's better than it used to be. Where are the mechanisms in place to train and nourish new talents? Who's going to wait to let them develop their skills? How many flop collections can a designer have without being fired? What's the difference between a designer who's had a flop vs an artist who is still developing?

The same issues exist in a lot of other "creative" industries. Take, for example, music where the loss of A&R departments means that record labels aren't investing in new recording artists like they used to in the past. Labels are going to go with artists with "proven" track records over more unusual artists that previously would have been developed, now get to toil away in obscurity.

 

[Cocteau Stone]

What I mean is to have a time where fashion was beautiful, exciting, and exhilarating. A time where mediocrity was frowned upon, not celebrated, and that goes for everyone—from the designers to the stylists to the models. It felt competitive in a good way, but now everyone is the same and not take risks. Yes, Daniel is doing a great job, yet I am always feeling like something is missing. The industry as a whole needs a jolt of lightning to wake it up.

Interesting you mention the sense of competition because I think that is all the more prevalent now but in a completely different context. Then it was a technical competition, from the executions of the maison/atelier/petit mains/house etc, the makeup and hair, models, jewellery and other parts. Now it’s like trophy hunting; what celebs sit in the front row, who wears it in the carpet and who has that “iconic moment”.

It accentuates the mediocrity we have now because more than ever, designers at large are looking to past in the worst possible way. Everything feels so fleeting and not memorable or impactful. Or it somewhat does feel like that, but you can see the cogs working by PR and social media to prolong it to make the basic seem so everlasting.

I’ve chatted to a few friends about fashion and it’s something we really don’t need at large. We need clothes, but not things like this. But when it is presented and showcased with such compassion and prowess the fantasy of it all colliding with reality creates a passionate yearning to see how far it can be pushed. Few do that now, and when one tries to it feels as others say extremely contrived.

 

[Kanzai]

Is Kingtheyskens the Gallianostan member? They are really the same in my eyes, same arguments, same attitudes towards Roseberry.