Dior: The Borehouse

[LolaSvelt]

I never get excited about Dior shows any more. Has Galliano lost it? I just look at his past collections.

 

[AGiles]

So sad

The last great Dior Collection was A/W 2006 RTW.
The Powers at LVMH reigned him in he was told to go back to the roots of Dior
and so for the Spring 2007 he gave them the most Austere collection in his history. Dior makes money on Bags Shoes and Perfume so ideally John should be able to do what he wants on the clothing front. But they are ultra protective of Dior which is killing it. The 1947 Dior woman is dead in every way except for couture. Givenchy had to get completely murdered before they let someone take it in a Brave new direction. I am hopeful the Suits will wake up and see that Dior has to live in the now if it wants to remain not only desirable but on the cutting edge of fashion.

 

[Dkammern]

ok, so it sure wasn't Egypt... but hey!
can we say Borehouse? still?

vogue.it

flowers (like this) he had not done!! instant love i think... need to go to bed and recheck HQs tomorrow

 

[Spike413]

I still don't know if I all out love the new collection, but you're right Dkammern, it's certainly not boring.

I think if anything it provided a jolt to the heart of Dior. It's kitschy and teeters on the tacky side, but it's got a bit of liveliness to it that was desperately needed for the house.

 

[daniellat]

I think the show concepts are redundant these days, but the clothes i cant see anything boring about them. Probably the styling and then the props in the background, it became very burlesque and its been seen a lot now...

 

[mikeijames]

ok, so it sure wasn't Egypt... but hey!
can we say Borehouse? still?

vogue.it

flowers (like this) he had not done!! instant love i think... need to go to bed and recheck HQs tomorrow

hey, we thought he stepped out of the borehouse last season, as well, but then we still got that same old borehouse dior when resort rolled out.

 

[AGiles]

best Dior collection in seasons.... still not quite amazing tho

 

[Dkammern]

hey, we thought he stepped out of the borehouse last season, as well, but then we still got that same old borehouse dior when resort rolled out.

ok... so there has been double-dipping... let's just hope it's all going up from now!

 

[mikeijames]

ok... so there has been double-dipping... let's just hope it's all going up from now!

i'm sure it boils down to balance sheets in the end. if these more expressive presentations turn over more product, we'll see more of them. his betters at the house of dior should have a pretty good baseline on how well the product sells with the more subdued presentations since we've had several over the past years. i know that with respect to beauty, fragrance, and handbags, they've still turned a swift profit even with the more 'borehouse' collections we've seen.

 

[Street_a_Licious]

consequence of the Couture show:

we'll either get floral prints (yawn) or some serious reworkings of the floral shapes into RTW garments.

let's hope and pray for the latter

 

[mikeijames]

consequence of the Couture show:

we'll either get floral prints (yawn) or some serious reworkings of the floral shapes into RTW garments.

let's hope and pray for the latter

if they were smart, we'd see a new fragrance and handbag to match.

 

[Street_a_Licious]

if the current head makeup artist would be smart, we'll get a flower themed S/S makeup collection

seeing how Dior Beaute has released loads of rather lackluster items lately (with lackluster ad campaigns to boot), i wouldn't count on it

BUT! a new fragrance could well be on the horizon. forgot how Natalie Portman signed a contract to front a fragrance for Dior?

 

[tiffany]

I think this new collection signals a welcome shift. It's not a break with what he's been doing in past seasons but it's a move in a new(ish) direction and I for one am excited about it

 

[Style Savvy]

I saw a photo on MDC Facebook and the theme seems to be Hawaiian. *cringes*

 

[TianCouture]

I saw that as well on WWD---it was bad. However, the last couple couture collections have kinda defined the trends we have been seeing. Before anyone did lingerie as outwear, John did in HC. Same with the equestrian thing. He did that in HC, and now its huge for fall. And with the last HC collections what was it in simple terms, a bunch of bright colors. And what will be a serious trend for SS11 as seen thus far--bright colors. I'm studying right now, but I will go into greater detail 2morrow, because it is somewhat true...

 

[mikeijames]

honestly, for the first time since last season's ready-to-wear, i felt that dior evolved out of the borehouse. from a covetability standpoint, i don't know anything -- except maybe barring fendi -- that has created more excitement around their accessories. and from a design perspective, the clothes really and truly look like the more modest offerings he's presented for several seasons on end but styled in such a way to create a themed presentation. i don't see what's so wrong with that.

i feel like people have been calling for something super-creative and when we finally get it, they hate it. does no one remember how dior used to be?

style.com

 

[Spike413]

^ I think it's a taste issue though, as well as the feeling that what he's now doing is nothing that hasn't been seen. That look you posted is actually a good example of just how much John has changed, and not for the better. He managed to take his inspiration, which that season ranged from the boudoir to street gangs to India to Elvis and Vegas and finished in Mexico, and make clothes/looks that reflected a little bit of each influence. I think it takes quite a creative mind to find a way to combine such clashing elements to the point where you're not quite sure what it is you're seeing, and to do so in such a way that the pieces are still wearable and desirable. And that wasn't even one of his best collections.

He may be able to sell what he's doing now, but I hardly think that it takes any kind of creativity to think of 40s and 50s era naval elements and pin ups and visualize them through a tropical lens a la South pacific. Besides being jam-packed with kitsch, which has become John's worst enemy these last few years, it's just such an obvious source of inspiration. And then to take those inspirations and create clothes that so obviously allude to them....I don't see how that's worth praising and I definitely don't see how working that way could be called creative in the least. That's his biggest problem, he takes inspiration from boring/cliched sources and uses that inspiration so literally. My guess is that's why people are still complaining, despite the fact that this season's collection isn't as stodgy as it could be. Once upon a time John was one of the few genius that fashion had. It's going to take one hell of a case of amnesia to make people forget that.

 

[mikeijames]

^ I think it's a taste issue though, as well as the feeling that what he's now doing is nothing that hasn't been seen. That look you posted is actually a good example of just how much John has changed, and not for the better. He managed to take his inspiration, which that season ranged from the boudoir to street gangs to India to Elvis and Vegas and finished in Mexico, and make clothes/looks that reflected a little bit of each influence. I think it takes quite a creative mind to find a way to combine such clashing elements to the point where you're not quite sure what it is you're seeing, and to do so in such a way that the pieces are still wearable and desirable. And that wasn't even one of his best collections.

He may be able to sell what he's doing now, but I hardly think that it takes any kind of creativity to think of 40s and 50s era naval elements and pin ups and visualize them through a tropical lens a la South pacific. Besides being jam-packed with kitsch, which has become John's worst enemy these last few years, it's just such an obvious source of inspiration. And then to take those inspirations and create clothes that so obviously allude to them....I don't see how that's worth praising and I definitely don't see how working that way could be called creative in the least. That's his biggest problem, he takes inspiration from boring/cliched sources and uses that inspiration so literally. My guess is that's why people are still complaining, despite the fact that this season's collection isn't as stodgy as it could be. Once upon a time John was one of the few genius that fashion had. It's going to take one hell of a case of amnesia to make people forget that.

there's a balance with regard to "taste level." during the heyday of galliano's dior, we had endless conversations about the "taste level" of those shows (although i'm not sure we spoke about it in such project runway terms back then the conversation back in those days remained that the styling of the shows found itself disconnected from the way the stores and the street incorporated dior. he went so far out there that one had to study the shows just to find the pieces that would actually appear in a store or on someone's back. but let's recall where we're coming from. this is a look from his spring collection JUST A COUPLE YEARS AGO:

(style.com)

how in the world can we draw a correlative between such milquetoast collections FOR SPRING and the stuff that he's bring now. not only has the styling amped the look so much so that it sells everything. the cosmetics. the bags. the shoes. the clothes. the jewelry. all of which fall under the label of christian dior. but there's a clear difference in the design of the clothes! these are not the clothes from the dior borehouse years whatsoever!!

(style.com)

with that said, i think it shows an enormous amount of maturity as a designer that john galliano has found middleground between those years and the most recent years. these dresses, these pieces, don't SCREAM dior, but they definitely announce themselves and taken off the runway, you don't have to strain the mind to envision who would actually wear them in the real world. i mean, i loved the upfront sex appeal of the old dior, but one could easily see where questions of taste level would come up back then more than now....

(style.com)

 

[Spike413]

See I disagree. Yeah that yellow dress is shorter, brighter and has more detail going on but to me it's still a boring dress, a more youthful boring dress, but boring just the same. It's still a basic, run of the mill piece that doesn't take anything but marginal talent to create and that a young woman certainly doesn't need to go to Dior to buy. Something like that could be had from any number of Italian bridge collections, department stores or high street shops.

The white macrame one on the other hand, unwearable and vulgar as it is, doesn't look like something you're going to find at the mall. I also feel as though that dress, that whole collection in fact, knowingly embraced notions of bad taste and ran with them. That's part of what made collections like that, which were still hugely commercial, so much fun. Not to mention they were extremely aspirational as well. What youngish fashion conscious woman didn't want something from Dior back then? Dior was then what Balmain is now, just far more delirious and more affordable to boot. I think it was another season or two before John started putting more emphasis on show pieces while filling boutiques with basics that had very little to do with the runway collection.

Cute and colorful as some of these new clothes may or may not be there's something kind of cheesy about them, like Barbie clothes. It's almost like an out of touch older person's take on what's youthful and fun.

 

[mikeijames]

^we'll have to agree to disagree on that point. i think the barbie clothes' criticism would much more easily get applied to those earlier unrealistic collections -- those collections did make us trip the light fantastic, but they were, in the end, unrealistic -- rather than the two ready-to-wear presentations we've seen recently. you can see the radical difference even in the fall collections from those respective years. we have this frighteningly boring dress from the fall of 2007:

(style.com);

compared with this bold outing for his most recent fall collection:

(style.com);

juxtaposed next to some of the froth from the "non borehouse" years at dior. i would not mark his most recent collections as those more suited for a barbie doll. this is a FALL look from 2003:

(style.com).

while i know the girls clamored for those dresses and that jacket and those shoes and that bag (which is the genius of dior back then), it would find itself even more subject to the type of criticism you're leveling against his collections today. whenever he goes in a more creative and joyful direction, he's going to be subject to that criticism. it's up to him -- and the house -- to make sure the clothes actually stand up against that.