John Galliano's ghostly cabaret for Margiela Finally, a little fantasy

We live in arid, extremely arid, almost desert-like times. As Leon Talley famously said, "There is a famine of beauty," and to that famine, we add, a recent deep creative drought that has collectively trapped us in the mundane and trivial of "elevated basics." This year, in Paris as well as in Milan, fashion appeared sick with realism, accustomed to reflecting on the present and its frankly mundane problems, creating metaphors for social media, and selling clothes that were just themselves. Unfortunately, there is nothing more vulgar than the present – only because we are in it. In a fashion where even identity is a commercial strategy (paraphrasing Carlo Mazzoni's recent article on Lampoon), there was a need for a truly artistic, theatrical show capable of creating that "dream," which for many is still the primary characteristic of an industry that, more than fashion itself, deals with luxury clothing. That's why John Galliano's latest show for Maison Margiela, a Haute Couture or "Artisanal" show as the house defines it, literally shook the pillars of the Earth for everyone present and even for the absent ones. A film critic years ago described Atom Egoyan's film Exotica as a "turbid aquarium where the ghosts of human desire swim," and a similar spectacle is what closed, on a very high note (accompanied by the music of Lucky Love and Hometown Glory by Adele, a song about the poverty and beauty of the suburbs), the Couture Week in Paris.

The best part, however, is that Galliano's message, the atmosphere he created, the narrative he established, so far removed from the terrible, plasticized prose of corporate storytelling, would be understandable even to those lacking the critical tools or the cultural and artistic background necessary to decipher all its elements. There was a lot of technique at play in the show: the transparent organza garments and the aforementioned painted stockings, but also the weaves and textures of wool illusionistically impressed into silk, the latex drapes in which Gwendoline Christie was wrapped. Beyond the atmosphere that will be praised by a thousand other voices, Couture was fully present and in its most subtle, "magical," and stunning form. Many sentimental or idealistic pens will spill rivers of ink on nostalgia, on the tragic commerciality of today's fashion, on the desire for fashion to return to being the grand dream machine of the past. Don't listen to them: their hearts blind them, and these considerations distract from what is truly important. Namely, that Galliano has demonstrated how, even today, the space to explore the shadowy realms and the darkest sides of the human imagination exists—only that no one wants to explore it.