Dior: The Borehouse

Mr-Dale

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Back in 1873, we had a vivid discussion right here in the Designers & Collections forum of tFS called 'Dior: The Madhouse'. At that time Galliano had started doing his Surf, Rasta and Golf collections for the house...logoed tees and saddle bags were the ultimate commercial items, his mood was tranny to the max and high drama and his couture collections were unique, spectacular, full of spirit, new, influential and dropdead gorgeous. But some people around here were lusting for a more grown-up Dior, 'snapping back to chic', having more connection to Mr. Dior's work...maybe even having an updated version of the Bar Suit.

Right now, that is where we are at. An updated version of the Bar suit, a brand that aims more at women that aren't 20-something or teens, and a self-proclaimed snap back to chic and elegance Result: ultimate boredom. Everything is the same: lifeless, uninspired, redundant, barely influential, unspectular. BUT, it's all money in the bank (so it seems). IMO, today's Dior is not good: it's boring. Never could I have imagined that Dior would become boring. Ever since I discovered Galliano and Dior (I was a fanboy, yes), I thought of him as the master of show, beauty, invention and spirit. But those words are no longer applicable to that 12 year old combination.

What needs to change NOW? How can Dior become relevant again? How can Galliano make us gush over his couture collections again. What must happen to find a balance between The Madhouse and The Borehouse?

I thought this would be interesting to discuss since it's always brought up in every single Dior collection thread how we wish for the good ol' days to return. Just like we did in 1873 :wink:
 
+1.

For one thing, I hate the runways that zig zag all over the place, and stairs that go up and down. I prefer a simple straight runway. It should be the clothes that delight us, not the setting. Seems like he's been alternating between zig zag and normal runway each season.
 
i personally speculate that the house of dior is evaluating whether or not they want to move forward with galliano. as much as i used to rant back in 1873 that the clothes weren't realistic and had no relationship to the stuff we saw in the stores, i never in my wildest dreams thought the pendulum could swing so far the other way. it's sort of like the house of prada. as much as i recoil at her more experimental and knowingly-ugly looks, it's part of her DNA. when she goes completely commerical, we lose interest. it's the same with dior: when he gave us a circus every season, we thought him insane -- although i believe the sales at the house back then beat expectations because they were compared against years of paltry sales. i mean, i know girls who had seven or eight saddle bags in different colors! friends of mine wore j'adore dior shirts to the gym! like, they made hand over fist money back then. and don't get me started on the logomania!

now, what's their entry point item? yes, i know quite a few who have fallen into a thrall over the lady dior and others, but there's just not the crazy excitement -- and spending -- that there used to be. also, i know that excitement used to invigorate the sales of their cosmetics and fragrance. add to that how crazy people were going over dior homme! i mean, men were WARDROBE shopping there. i don't know. i think they have to be re-assessing their strategy as they go forward else it doesn't make sense to continue to pay a man as creative as galliano to just create things that the staff at the atelier could do by heart.
 
I think Galliano should infuse the tranny spirit into the Bar suit and make it new and cool. He should also come up with more of his own ideas, because right now he just seems to be doing the same old Dior suit again and again. It was good the first season, Fall 2008 HC, but it got old really quickly.

And unlike Littlearthquakes, I love that Dior's runways are always spectacular. It adds to the element. Plus if we were stuck with the same old clothes, a new background every season keeps it a little fun.

And what do you mean, 1873? tFS was opened in 2004 or 2005, right? Or I don't get the joke.
 
I don't think we can really count out the death of Steven Robinson, he may have been just as responsible for the excitement at Dior as Galliano himself.
 
It's a really interesting discussion, and I really am glad that you made a separate thread for it, Dale.

In all honesty, I just cannot put my finger on what exactly the heart of the problem truly is. Is it really Robinson's death? It is really Arnaut and Carcelle? Or is it something else entirely? I can't say.

Either way, something is up. I just cannot convince myself that Galliano has lost his talent, or even that Robinson was the real talent behind Dior. But, it has become painfully clear that Galliano is in a rut, a deep one.

So many of the things that made Galliano for Dior so great seemed to disappear without a trace, and it all started to happen around SS 07 couture. His sense of color went down the drain, the sexuality was suddenly suffocated, the inspirations became stale and out-of-touch, the list goes on and on.

The way I see it...the Dior girl, once a hip, urban, globetrotter, was whisked off her feet by some evildoer and quickly locked up in the Dior archives. She could no longer dress in her hobo rags found in dumpsters and dives, she could no longer wear her kimonos with her latex bras and panties that she picked up from the local sex shop, and she could no longer wear her silk tracksuit to go jogging down avenue Montaigne! Like Rapunzel, she's been left to rot in some abandoned tower, isolated from the world and oblivious to current culture. Her insatiable desire to dress up leaves her to resort to the Dior archives...all she can wear now are dated day suits and silly debutante ball gowns.

Someone has to let her out.
 
What needs to change NOW? How can Dior become relevant again? How can Galliano make us gush over his couture collections again. What must happen to find a balance between The Madhouse and The Borehouse?

He can do this by NOT rehashing Christian Dior's 1947 New look collection every single season, no matter if it is couture or ready to wear, changing only the color and transparency of the fabric. i miss the old crazy john but i think the fashion press talked about him so that he has kind of gone into his creative shell. It as if he has left he building....kind of like Slimane at the end of his tenure at Dior Homme
 
also i think some of the issue maybe that he hasn't been able to evolve from the New Romantic-history dependent-fashion theme that he does so well when all the celebrated designers now are focusing more on nebulous and abstract visions....
 
I don't mind the crazy runway settings, in fact I prefer them over a straight forward runway, however the editing of Dior videos hardly do the beautiful settings justice. Plus, it gives the models more to work with and "model" more since most of them are so boring that I would simply snore if I was to see them just walk back and forth.

In terms of designing, he simply needs to do what he was doing back in the 90's and early 2000's. Which was taking an inspiration or a theme and portraying that theme as is and not looking back at past collections for what type of silhouettes or fabrics to use. Further more, his designs for the past couple of years have not been very "Galliano". I remember seeing videos of his collections back in the 90's. They were so inhibited, free spirited, and unapologetic. What happened to models wearing nothing but undergarments or see-through dresses accessorized with oversized pearl necklaces that dripped on the runway and flirted with the audience, even sitting on their laps? All of it gone; replaced by stale prude models wearing stiff shiny overly beaded fabrics who bite their pointer fingers to portray "sexy".

He needs to go back in time, that's what he needs to do.
 
I agree that he sort of needs to go back in time and let the Dior Rapunzel out of her tower. Throw out that braided hair, climb down the wall and enter our streets again Miss Excitement!

I think the key thing is his inspirations. For the past couple of years Galliano has been going to museums, reading books, watching photographs and judging by the novelty and excitement of those collections, he's not a star at bringing something like that to life creatively. What he used to in the late 90's and early zeroes is take a hot air balloon and fly over Egypt, walk through the slums of India and dance with children, visit Chinese marketplaces and find himself lost in Turkish palaces of bygone times. THAT's what he is the king in IMO: go somewhere, totally live and breath the atmosphere and then put that energy in an amazing dress, shoe or coat bringing it to life. Combining that spirit in the clothes with a powerful soundtrack, amazingly capable models that understand the energy and dramatic make-up created awesome shows. How I wish for that to return. So please John, get on a plane and fly to friggin Alaska for all I care and sniff up the atmosphere!
 
For one thing, I hate the runways that zig zag all over the place, and stairs that go up and down. I prefer a simple straight runway. It should be the clothes that delight us, not the setting. Seems like he's been alternating between zig zag and normal runway each season.
I know! What happened to good old fashioned clothes speaking for themselves? Instead there's this wacky runway going all over the place. I feel like it's an attempt to distract from mediocre design.
 
oh, an Alaskan inspired collection?

:lol:

would love to know how that one would end up

lots of dead baby seals i guess..... :/
 
God, this is a very difficult thread actually.

I mean I have a lot of ideas, of course, for Dior in general, but knowing the designer which Galliano is, most of my suggestions will fall flat since he would, or could, never do anything I would suggest... In a world when every girl is wearing tank-tops and jeans with a brand handbag, I guess Dior thinks that the only customers they can wholeheartedly serve to are the potential Chanel customers they try to steal with the suits etc. Galliano, to me, is a genius, but he was never the designer with the most exquisite taste that oozes elegance and refinement. He was always loud and mostly gimmick-y, but he was such a force, such a creative man, that anything he did came out to be genius.

His work was not empty spectacle: it had substance. And he was one of the very few who made fashion exciting, when Marc was designing the most boring grunge collections one after the other.

I think the only reason for this change is the business and what sells. Clearly, his recent collections sell like crazy since he is doing the same thing again and again season after season. At the same time, he is not the designer that does 'refinement' as well as many others, or let's say as effortlessly as he does the over-blown and ostentatious work. They have changed the interiors of the stores to Dior's signature dove grays and whites, they made everything look more mature and heavy... It seems they are trying really hard to reach and speak to that customer who has the money and is significantly older. Maybe the 'crazy Dior's customer no longer exists.

It is just sad to see Marc having all the fun with LV and MJ, and Galliano sending out season after season boring collections. What saddens me the most is, there was a time when the Dior accessories rocked the fashion world. The many many lines of bags, the sexiest shoes, belts... everything! Now, there is almost no respectable accessory line left at house. Nothing! I think LVMH is stripping Dior from all the accessories to help LV's sales even more. That would be a sad evaluation, but it seems so. And many pieces they put out look cheap and poorly made.

Dior is all over the place, and I do not know what we will see in the future that will excite us again. Even a little. I just want to see a young and careless Dior girl again... she was so seductive and cool, and on a par with the Gucci girl back in early 2000s. Those two were the only ones who mattered really... and now both seem to be dead! :(
 
What he needs to do is find inspiration that is good and, if needs be, safe.
But just do something with a bit of inspiration.
Not just a load of ugly archive pieces matched with underwear.
Soon enough all of the big name houses are just going to be different coloured variations of the archive. Just like the Valentino direction.
 
OK, some suggestions:


- lose the tranny make-up. It looks old and dated. And combining that with old looking clothes doesn't make the Dior model 'hip.'
- chose better fabrics: most Dior fabrics look and feel cheap. Yes hard to believe, but true. Especially when you visit the stores.
- go dark, dangerous and sexy. Take some cues from Elbaz. That is the Parisian woman we all love.
- change the ad campaigns to something so different, so unique that it will give an instant face-lift to the brand image.
- go modern: pls pls pls pls!!!! We need to see one futuristic thing from Dior: just one thing.
- re-evaluate 'the fashion jewelry' line: Dior sadly offers the cheapest designer jewelry there is to be found. Airport crap... YUCK! even the prices are so low, it just breaks one's heart.
- re-release the saddle bag.
- create a younger line if there is need.
- fire every accessory designer in the house, and hire much younger people, and release three very loud and bold brand new bag designs and invest in shoes... lots of shoes.
- collaborations with artists, architectures, industrial designers... anyone that can bring something fresh to the table. Also editors and stylists. (God, I can't believe I am suggesting this)
- make the fragrance campaigns and packaging much more opulent and high-taste: most Dior cosmetic campaigns looks painfully cheap. Look at Chanel, even Gucci, then look at Dior: so sad in every way in comparison.
 
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Some of those suggestions remind me of an article from The Times in 2005:

Who adores Dior?

To-die-for couture at the shows; flashy logo-ed jeans and plastic p*rno mules in the shops. So who is the Dior woman? Kate Spicer tries to find out

“The girls from Liverpool and the Indian girls go for them,” says the Dior assistant. “Well, I’m from Liverpool, and I think it’s like a Barbie shoe,” says Eagles’s mate. “I’ve never seen a girl in Liverpool wearing a pair of those. I could really see Jodie Marsh in that — at Stringfellows.”

Eagles looks over the selection in the concession, which is largely bags, shoes and entry-level clothing — scarves, tops and those J’adore Dior T-shirts. “They remind me of ‘I love Benidorm’. I really do not know who buys them,” she says, fingering a £255 sequined one. “Some of it’s young, fun and bold, like disposable high fashion at top prices. But even if the prices were high-street, I still wouldn’t buy it. I suppose it’s a real emblem of how much disposable cash is around.” Her mate says: “It makes me think of that Shania Twain line, ‘All we ever want is more/A lot more than we had before’.”

Justine Mills, the owner and buyer of Cricket, Liverpool’s fashion HQ for footballers’ wives, explains why, in a city of peacocks who love nothing more than dressing very up, and will spend their last pennies doing so, you can’t find Dior. “We have Roland Mouret, Balenciaga, Stella, Chloé, Missoni, Matthew Williamson and Temperley. But we don’t stock Dior, because, although I think it has a fantastic designer, the best, I imagine the people who buy it are Russian prostitutes.”

The words “Russian prostitute” come up again in the weeks spent trying to figure out who is Dior woman now. The label, once known for its raffiné tailoring, romantic evening dresses and strong sense of colour, is now frequently spoken of in those somewhat racist bywords for a tasteless logo wh*re. Even the two most devoted Dior junkies I unearthed used those cruel words when we went for a good rummage around the Sloane Street shop. Even they found some of the kit revolting.

Fashion takes a hard line on Dior’s designer, John Galliano. He is, officially, a genius, and is always spoken of in reverential terms. If you own a piece of Galliano’s Central St Martins graduation show — famously sold lock, stock to Joan Burstein of Browns as it came off the catwalk — then you own a fashion Picasso. The maverick prince joined the house of Dior in 1997, and has been credited with raising one of Paris’s most distinguished ateliers from the dust. His couture shows are a fashion spectacular, the work of a genius designer at the top of his game, but he also bears responsibility for the entire design empire — the ready-to-wear, accessories, perfume, children’s clothes, watches, jewellery and beauty. From a £30,000 couture dress to a £10 lip gloss, it is all under Galliano’s creative thumb.

He has said that when he designs couture, he has someone real in his head, someone who epitomises modern style — Kate Moss or Gwen Stefani, perhaps. I wonder whom he had in mind when he was designing the plastic high-heeled mules in white and pink? There is a chasm between the glamour, creativity and spectacle of catwalk Dior, and the utter trashiness of much of the Dior that makes it into the shops. The French are whispering about the tarnishing of the once chic brand. Two Parisian stylists told me how they had stood outside the shop on Avenue Montaigne, laughing.

A high-end freelance fashion stylist, who would not be named (insult Dior and you will probably never be allowed access to its clothes again), concurs: “I definitely think that the stuff in the shop is absolute trash. The shows are an amazing spectacle, but bull**** compared with what ends up in the shops, where there is pink and chiffon and diamanté all over the place. “It’s a case of emperor’s new clothes, because nobody in London does that look. I imagine Britain is not a big market for them. Who wears that ****?”

Another international fashion commentator, who also refused to be named, sees Dior as “that strange mix of high-fashion concept and something trashy and naff. It is for people with flashy money. And for those who can’t afford the suit, there are hair bobbles and handbags. Under Galliano, Dior has become more accessible, but his accessible lines don’t sit comfortably with the prêt-à-porter. It is like he is having a laugh at the customer’s expense”.

Galliano doesn’t see it like that, of course. “The trick, I guess, is to get a happy balance of creativity and originality with commercial appeal,” he says, “to create a mood or personality that everyone can tap into and buy into.” Or, as Sidney Toledano, the president of Dior, puts it: “The creative side defines the concept of the collection — the vision. The business side is responsible for bringing the designer’s vision to life ... with the consumer.”

But what sort of consumer? I am in the store on Sloane Street, the only Dior shop in Britain. Upstairs, the shoes, handbags and sunglasses draw a crowd of bridge-and-tunnel shoppers in crisply ironed peasant wear, straight outta Epsom. The majority of the shoppers are American, wearing hijab or doing the bubble-gum high-fashion thing that the Japanese do so well. Downstairs, where the clothes are, there is just an overweight mother of the bride and her pal. Of course, there is stuff I would grab in a trolley dash — the odd vest, a pair of black silk MC Hammer pants, a petrol-green, classic Galliano bias-cut dress, spoilt only by a blatant logo’ed buckle on its hip.

But I am here for the horrors, and my basket overfloweth: fringed suede hot pants, brown jeans in logo-ed fabric, a fuchsia frilly top, appliquéd and sequined denim, even midriff-baring tops (even New Look has dumped the crop top — midriff-baring is desperately fashion old hat). The nipped-in jackets in the palest denim with white lace look great in the ads, but would take some wearing to look anything other than Moscow moneyed in the real world. The pièces de résistance, though, are white-and-pink logoed silk-jersey sports separates. Teamed in a certain way, they look remarkably like shell suits.

It seems as though all these bizarre clothes aren’t meant for the rarefied London fashion market, but for tourists. I tried to track down an indigenous Dior crowd, I really did. I rang round the after-dark divas, the door b*tches, the label whores, the fashion junkies and the women who spend bucketloads on clothes, and I came up with hardly anyone who, in recent years, had bought more than a couple of pairs of sunglasses. Apparently, Dior from the 1950s and 1960s goes well at Bang Bang, the vintage boutique on London’s Goodge Street. But the current collections are a different matter.

A couple of people who have been friends with Galliano since the days when he was regularly seen out with the true hip London mafia said things discreetly through other people, off the record, under pain of death: “She loves Galliano, but she is not a huge fan of mainline Dior”; “She much prefers John’s own stuff”; “She is a very old friend of John’s, and obviously thinks he is a creative genius, but a lot of Dior is not her thing — although she does have some beautiful Dior dresses.”

But the discerning fashion crowd are deserting Dior. Even the baby socialites don’t go for the logo-ed lollipop chic. Isabella Hervey has a baby-pink Dior jumper that bares her midriff, apparently, but those girls are more into Chloé and Matthew Williamson these days.

At the opening of Baby Dior in June, a garden square in Belgravia was transformed into a brat party paradise, with scented Dior candles, white tents, fairies and carousels. The haute couture mamans et bébés were flown over from Paris — models, socialites and actresses — and put up at the Berkeley for free. The British list ranged from the stylist queen bee Katy England to Tamara Mellon, Mrs Roman Abramovich and Elizabeth Hurley. These are the customers Dior wants to think about.

Hurley gave me a quote, which I am under strict instructions to use in full: “I’ve worn countless Dior dresses, and they’ve all been fabulous. I love wearing anything that John designs. More importantly, not only is he brilliantly creative and talented, he’s also an incredibly nice man.”

Hurley has been seen in a lot of Dior. She will do entry-level kit such as the J’adore Dior T-shirt — as seen on every fake-label market stall from Wembley to Istanbul — and she will do couture gowns.

Baby Dior is going to be all about entry-level kit. Not every mummy can afford the main collection’s chiffon minidress, but seeing baby in £50 Dior diamanté bootees or sucking on a plastic bottle with Dior wrapped around it is going to delight a certain type of godmother. Because when it is for kids, the tackiness of blatant Dior branding is bypassed for the pure campness of it all. Baby Dior is for sale in Liverpool.

When I meet Kate and Liz, the girlfriends of wealthy nightclub and property entrepreneurs, Kate, 25, is wearing a pair of those pink-and-white mules, along with high-end jeans and a tight, bright-pink kaftan stretched across her standout, pillowy cleavage. Liz, 33, is wearing exactly the same.

“Diamonds and pink are the words that describe me and Kate,” says Liz. We talk over several vodka tonics. These women don’t work — other than at the gym, where they wear old J’adore Dior T-shirts, even the sequined ones. Their style icons are Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, “Cat Deeley’s got beautiful hair” and Victoria Beckham.

“We’re not into Jordan. I like the way she looks, but she’s too trashy and high-street. Kate Moss? She makes no effort. I can’t pull that grungy look together — there is an art to it,” says Liz. “Some of the looks that Sienna Miller comes out in, they’re just not acceptable,” agrees Kate.

“We feel a bit weird about wearing colours in this country. British fashion icons are grungy, they wear neutrals and are safe — if you wear colours, you’re made to feel different. We go away a lot, to Europe and America, as much to get dressed up and go out with like-minded people as anything else, because nobody gets dressed up here.”

These girls like to shop — a lot. “The first place I go in Selfridges is the Dior concession. I can guarantee I will like the Dior stuff. Bags, shoes, trainers, casual stuff, belts, sunglasses, lip glosses. I love it all.”

As if to illustrate, they both pull out a gooey, glittery pink Dior Addict lip gloss and top up their juicy kissers. Kate and Liz are dripping in ice: a Chopard watch, a Rolex with diamond bezel, earrings, necklaces. Money is no object. Both had £550 hair extensions cut out in a matter of days — “They gave us a headache.”

Is it any surprise that Dior has an advertising hoarding inside the Nikki Beach bar in St Tropez? Monett, a rich German woman who lives in Monte Carlo, loves Dior. “His clothes aren’t serious. They are perfect for a yacht party. It’s not metropolitan. I would never wear Dior in Germany. In Hamburg or London, you can’t run around in crazy yellow trousers, but here you can. Certainly, some of his looks are too Russian, if you know what I mean, and you can’t wear Dior head to toe, like you can with Cavalli.”

Kate and Liz prefer to do their Dior shopping in Marbella and Monaco. “Dior has just opened a shop in Marbella, where the stuff is more extrovert and OTT. I love the shop in Cannes — there is a lovely one on the Croisette. The bags are nicer — proper crackers, like the ones in the Dubai shop. It’s a more expensive range, a better range, because the customers are richer.”

This summer, they will be shaking their long, immaculately straight blonde hair in Ibiza, Miami, Marbella and New York. “I bought these for Ibiza,” she says, turning her heel for a look at her Dior mules. “They’re great, ’cos the heels don’t scuff.” Doesn’t she think they’re a bit ... “What, strippery? Yeah, I do,” she says, laughing.

And there’s the rub. The cheaper entry-level lines, the ones so diffuse from the original couture collection, are for the fashion ingénue. And they will sell — big time. Last year, the Dior Group turned profits of £1.7 billion. But with Galliano putting on £1m couture shows, it needs to. The vulgar-logoed Dior that you find in the shops finances Galliano’s creative pleasures. As one fashion historian said: “If this is the price we pay for him pushing forward the parameters of fashion, then it’s a price worth paying.”

And the price we pay is the pink-and-white plastic p*rno mules, at £200 a pair.
 
-tranny makeup was always part of Galliano's vision. :lol:
-cheap fabrics: i read that it was a choice made by Arnault, to reduce costs and maximize profits. also, to remove silk lining or lining in general was his choice. a lot about the current Dior is Arnault's fault basically. he gets the final say about what lands on the salesfloor but also what makes it onto the runways. Galliano bends to his every whim. and apparently the current Dior sells well enough for Arnault not to care.
-Dior's last MUST HAVE bag was the Gaucho, a bag i loved, but nothing since then was really "THERE".

i'd say "BLAME ARNAULT" but seeing how he is the richest man in all of France, one of the richest worldwide, there's nothing we can really do. Dior apparently still makes money, enough black numbers for Arnault to be happy with the current situation.

sad news, i know, but true news.
 

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