The Chiffon Trenches

by André Leon Talley

  Galliano and Steven got to work. I checked in on them from time to time, and I’d take out petty cash from the Paris office to buy McDonald’s for their crew when it seemed necessary. They were poor, and every cent of that fifty thousand dollars was being put to use.

  There was one big problem: Galliano had nowhere to put on the show.

  I racked my mind, driving up and down the streets of Paris, looking for a proper venue. There was the idea that it could be shown in the Institute of Islamic Culture or the Mona Bismarck Foundation. Then it came to me…Madame São Schlumberger’s private residence!

  São and I would often have lunch at the Ritz and then I’d go to all her couture fittings at Saint Laurent, Lacroix, and Chanel. São had just moved from the seventeenth-century landmark Hôtel de Luzy, on rue Férou on the Left Bank, to a newly decorated apartment on the Right Bank. The Hôtel de Luzy was empty. It was five floors: a library, a silver vault, and a fur vault, as well as a discothèque in the basement, with floors that lit up as you walked on them.

  We took São to lunch and I told her I needed a favor. Could we use her house for a fashion show?

  She loved the idea. “Of course you can,” she said.

  “I’ll sit you in the main salon on a sofa and these clothes will glide by you!” I said.

  “Oh good, I’ll go get a little face-lift,” she said.

  It was extremely generous of her to give us her house, for free. She had no idea who Galliano was, but she was a good friend of mine and trusted me.

  Everyone worked for free to help Galliano. The entire Vogue staff was at his disposal. Manolo Blahnik donated the shoes for free. Stephen Jones created a hat for each look, free of charge. Hair and makeup were done gratis. None of the models, including Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Kate Moss, and Naomi Campbell, collected a fee. Amanda Harlech picked up jewels on loan from Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Harry Winston. We all nurtured Galliano because we all understood the enormous brilliance of his work.

  The night before the show, São’s house was overrun with preparations. As I ran around setting up seating arrangements and fog machines, I realized the crew were all down in the basement, dancing and carrying on on the lit floors that pulsated from underneath. And there was Galliano, in the mix, having fun like this was some discothèque party! I saw Amanda doing her best to direct and style, pushing around furniture and moving speakers. She was the only one doing anything.

  I screamed to Amanda, “Get this crew together or I’m calling São and halting everything and I’m pulling out!”

  Amanda got everyone, including Galliano, back to work.

  It was a small collection, only seventeen looks, but from those seventeen Galliano began a legendary career. We had two shows, one at nine-thirty and another at eleven-thirty. Kate Moss was still being sewn into her dress when the first show started. Both were completely packed. Everyone wanted to get in, all the society ladies. Fashion was a smaller world then, but all the players were there. Vogue, The New York Times, WWD.

  The world stood up and saw the great gifts of Galliano. It was a day of reckoning in the industry. Anna came to the show, in a Chanel suit, and embraced the whole thing, totally. That show was the template for fashion from then on. People started picking historical places to show, not just a runway or hotel lobby, or in the formal tents constructed in the Tuileries for ready-to-wear, or in the basement of the Louvre.

  Now every designer does big runway spectacles, but it was Galliano who started it.

  Not a designer in the world can say they didn’t copy Galliano in some way. Even Karl Lagerfeld changed the way he did shows after Galliano’s breakthrough. Of course Karl took it to a much higher level; he would create villas, spending four or five million dollars for a fifteen-minute Chanel show. Galliano did it on a budget, with barely a dime.

  Afterward, everyone came to Galliano. Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue wanted his clothes. Society ladies like Anne Bass and São Schlumberger would have him design pieces for them. People were clamoring for those clothes.

  I had managed to do all this and still maintain Karl Lagerfeld’s approval and friendship. This was really because he didn’t consider Galliano a threat. And at first he was right; Galliano was not a threat, early on. But this show launched his career, and he soon got the big job designing for Givenchy. Then after a year he left Givenchy and got the biggest job: artistic director and designer of haute couture for Christian Dior. That made Galliano the most important person in fashion.

  Dior is legendary, the biggest fashion house in the history of modern fashion. Yves Saint Laurent had started there, briefly, before he had a nervous breakdown and opened his own couture house. Chanel was the great designer but Dior was the name people associated with Paris couture.

  At Dior, you could have everything made to order, even a fine thin silk umbrella you carried as a walking stick. Dior was opulence, over-the-top. Film stars like Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, and Sophia Loren, they all went to Dior.

  Princesses, including Diane von Fürstenberg, had wedding looks made at Dior (DVF’s was made by then–house designer Marc Bohan, who had replaced YSL).

  One late Saturday night, several years later, I got a call from Galliano, asking me to come to his studio to see his new collection. We didn’t speak regularly as much anymore, so I was surprised to hear from him. I took a car over and it was like not a day had passed since we last spoke.

  “This is for you,” he said, and handed me a little blue box. Inside was the CBE

  medal, presented to him by Elizabeth II, queen of his native England.

  “You were like the pied piper leading people to me,” Galliano said.

  His gift and his acknowledgment had me in awe. It was one of the most significant moments of my life. I keep the box and the medal in my safety deposit box.

  Galliano understood me and I got him. I knew his wavelength, where his inspirations came about. I’d been accused of sleeping with all the designers, but the truth is that I embrace their dreams, step inside their dreams, and become part of their dreams. I bonded with Galliano on a human level. He is a genius, a visionary, a poet. A mad poet, like Rimbaud, or Verlaine, or Baudelaire. Underneath all his extraordinary romanticism is serious craft, superior skill. He understands how to manipulate a dress to make it float elegantly around a woman’s body.

  That fashion show at São Schlumberger’s was a crossroads in the fashion industry. I don’t think John will ever forget that. He got bigger and bigger, and grander and grander. It was his destiny. Of course, like Icarus, he was also destined to fall.

  —

  Steven Robinson came right along with Galliano to Givenchy, then to Dior. He was Galliano’s right-hand man. But somehow, his creative director, Amanda Harlech, was overlooked.

  From the outside, this might not have seemed like a big deal. But I truly understood how important Amanda Harlech was to Galliano’s creativity. One of the first times I met her, Anna sent me to shoot her home at Glyn Cywarch, the ancient Welsh seat of the Harlech family. It had formerly been a grand country house, but now its condition was…

  well-worn chic. All the fine gilt leather volumes should have been sent to museums. The George III chairs had stuffing and padding bursting from sun-rotted silk seats. Bats, hundreds of them, and their toxic bat dung, were slowly taking over a stone barn on the property. Amanda lived there in grand, rise-above-it-all elegance.

  Isabella Blow was supposed to be the shoot’s editor. Anna asked me to be on hand to oversee everything. Naturally Isabella couldn’t even compel herself to fluff a pillow, so I ended up doing all the work while she ran around talking. We had a big fight over her unwillingness to run a vacuum cleaner.

  During a break, Amanda and I escaped Isabella’s ranting and adjourned to the beach. As we strolled, Amanda collected pieces of glass and rock from the frothy Irish Sea.

  “What are those for?” I asked.

  “I’m sending these to John, these are the color
s we should use in the next collection.”

  That was how she worked. We became great friends from then on.

  Amanda’s a unique woman, slight but sharp. Oxford educated. She would write a narrative of a show, like an essay, and that’s what John would use to start his collection.

  Knowing this, I was puzzled to learn Galliano had not assured Amanda an appropriately prominent position at Givenchy. She had long been his muse and had stayed with him through turbulent years. I’d just assumed she was being taken care of.

  There were rumors going around that this was not the case.

  Amanda was in the process of divorcing her husband, Lord Harlech. Suffice to say, she required a paycheck worthy of her contributions. Lady Harlech (she kept her title) moved to a farmhouse in Shropshire with her two children, Tallulah and Jassett. I went out to Shropshire to shoot for Vogue.

  A passionate equestrian, Amanda had horses, huge horses that she’d climb up on, light as a feather. They would jump fences, that kind of thing. I photographed her riding one of those giant creatures, a lovely shoot.

  That night it was cold, and Amanda and I sat over a fire and she filled me in. Her expenses were extraordinary, and her salary at Givenchy had been paltry. Dior had hired Galliano and Steven Robinson at great salaries, with great perks. But somehow, Dior hadn’t made Amanda an offer at all. Galliano was so focused on himself he didn’t give a second thought to Amanda. He wouldn’t even take her calls.

  During each of my nightly marathon calls with Karl, I casually mentioned how Amanda was being treated by Galliano. Karl was never quite negative about Galliano because he knew there was real, inborn talent there. Though I never heard Karl say anything great about Galliano’s clothes, either. We talked about who was ordering Galliano’s clothes—Madame Schlumberger, Anne Bass—and what Anna Wintour was ordering. And then I casually mentioned, “You know, they’re not paying Amanda at the house of Dior.”

  If I spoke to him a certain way about it, something would happen. He didn’t respond right away, which meant he was thinking about it.

  “Bring her to the show tomorrow,” he said, “but take her to the boutique first and tell her to get anything she wants.” Those were the magic words. That meant he was interested.

  I called Amanda and told her to meet me on the steps of the Chanel boutique on rue Cambon at nine forty-five sharp the next morning. The show started at eleven, but they were opening early just for us. “You run in there, pull anything you want—hat, shoes, gloves, bag, whatever. Get dressed, leave your old clothes there, and we’ll get a car straight to the show.”

  Amanda picked out a gunmetal-gray suit with gold buttons, and we were off. No one asked or expected to be paid for any of it.

  I had no idea how this would go. Karl had never even met the woman; he could have responded any which way! But I had a feeling.

  When we arrived, Joan Juliet Buck, the editor in chief of French Vogue, was standing right at the entrance, her eyes bulging as she watched Amanda and me get out of our car. Amanda was clearly dressed in Chanel; the gilt buttons, the cut, the shoes were unmistakable. Joan Juliet sauntered over, like a cat ready to pounce upon a mouse.

  “Why are you here, Amanda?” Joan said, her eyebrow raised, feigned innocence.

  “Oh, I’m just visiting,” Amanda replied, and kept walking.

  That wasn’t good enough. “André, why is Amanda with you?”

  “Keep walking, don’t say another word,” I whispered to Amanda.

  We went directly backstage before the show began, and I introduced Amanda to Karl. They got on like fireworks. Love at first sight. He was so taken with her proper English breeding, sound education, and impeccable manners. And he was clearly impressed by the choices she made at the Chanel boutique (of course I advised Amanda on what suit and what accessories she should select!).

  Before we left to take our seats, Karl pulled me aside. “Take her to the couture and tell her they will make anything she wants.”

  This was Karl’s big trophy. If Karl liked you, he would say, “Go to Chanel and pick out anything you want.” There’s a big monetary difference between the boutique and the couture. At the boutique you’re picking dresses off a rack, but couture requires fittings!

  That’s major money. And Karl didn’t say pick one thing; he said she could pick anything she wanted. For free!

  Only a woman Karl thought very highly of was given carte blanche in the couture.

  His contract required that he could dress whomever he wanted. So many were lucky, including all the supermodels, Naomi, Linda, Christy, and Claudia Schiffer, who would stock up on dozens of expensive cashmere twinsets at the boutique or rue Cambon.

  The next day, we called up and went to the haute couture. Amanda wasn’t a rich white lady like São Schlumberger or Anna Wintour; she didn’t normally dress in couture, she just had great style. She went in there and was very respectful. She ordered a long black maxi coat, seriously severe, like a monk’s coat, and a long white pleated dress.

  Karl called me that night and told me he’d heard what she had picked. “That was a perfect choice,” he said. “Do you think I should have her at Chanel?”

  “But of course!”

  Amanda was reluctant to go right away. She was close to Galliano; they had been friends for years. Karl asked me to go home with her, to Shropshire, over Thanksgiving, and convince her to come to Chanel. It was frigidly cold, so cold I was collecting my own firewood and had to have the Ritz overnight me my Fendi shearling coat. It saved my life, as it took me an entire week of cajoling and persuading before Amanda agreed to go to Chanel. She went back to Paris, into the Chanel archives, had Coco Chanel’s famous suits from the sixties pulled out, and was photographed in them. That was how she announced her new job. And that’s where she’s been ever since.

  Although he didn’t end things the right way with Amanda, Galliano remained close with her while he completely revitalized Dior. What he did at Dior cannot be repeated by anyone. Only his mind could have done it. Galliano did a great deal for fashion. He’s a wicked kind of person, an exhaustively self-indulgent human being, but he came from humble beginnings. The greater his success, the more spoiled he became, causing havoc because of his genius. At his shows, he demanded his own VIP dressing room, to be decorated with zebra rugs and sofas and such. It started as a little makeshift room to greet people but became a lavish endeavor.

  John Galliano is truly a poet. I don’t judge anyone in life for anything. He had problems, including substance abuse. Whenever he had meltdowns at Dior, they would send him away to clinics in Switzerland.

  Steven Robinson died of what appeared to be a heart attack at thirty-eight years old.

  He was the creative director of Dior and Galliano’s own line, and he knew what Galliano was going to say before Galliano even thought about it. Steven dedicated his whole young life to Galliano; he did everything for him.

  I went to the funeral in Paris. Galliano was destroyed by this man’s death and was never the same. Steven was his best friend. In all the success at Dior, with all the perks, I think John just felt alone after Steven’s death.

  Many years later, Galliano had a breakdown. To make matters worse, it was in public, and it was recorded. I was shocked when I saw the tape. I still find it hard to believe he said what he said, even though there is tape, and I’ve heard it myself. I believe he was very intoxicated when he made those anti-Semitic remarks. Maybe he was in a dark, demonic place in his mind. It was devastating to me, to everyone in the fashion world. Galliano was fired by Dior.

  Later, Anna Wintour took Galliano under her wing but none of the big design houses would take him on. He went to rehab, got sober, and continues to be a talented designer. Whenever I run into him, he’s always kind. He’s a different person in sobriety and wonderful to be around. He will always be a friend, he will always be the imperfect human being that he is, and he will always have the most supreme talent. Nothing can take away the enormity of that kind
of visionary genius. He now designs couture at Maison Margiela, Paris. Anna Wintour remains loyal and frequently orders dresses to this day.

  Life changes. Life has to go on. You have to keep going. I, too, am a sinner, flawed and fallen from grace, getting up and trying for salvation, over and over.

  X

  High-profile people walked the halls of Vogue under Anna Wintour. She surrounded herself with strong, independent thinkers, which could sometimes lead to differences of opinion. Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele wanted a Bill Blass dress for a cover. But Anna Wintour had asked me to talk about that same dress in my column.

  There was a big fight in the fashion closet about that dress, and Anna ended up giving it to me and not Carlyne. Carlyne and I didn’t speak to each other for five years because of that dress.

  I admit that I can be moody and not always the easiest person to get along with.

  Being close to Karl Lagerfeld, on top of my “independent” personality, meant that I could stand up for myself, the same way Anna was able to stand up for herself with Grace Mirabella. But I never did anything ugly or vulgar. I was never boldly disruptive.

  Anna is not a woman of many words. She relied on editors, on the experts, for our opinions on dresses and collections. Perhaps she was not exactly secure in choosing clothes for the magazine. She’s never been on a photo shoot since being at the top of Vogue. She always made the final decisions, and in fact she is incredibly brilliant at making quick decisions, but she was never really passionate about clothes. Power was her passion, and even if Anna was silent, she was vital. She had power and she wielded it, brilliantly, to achieve a major career.

  At a certain point Anna stopped putting me on shoots. She probably thought I didn’t have the visual expertise or grace, or maybe she wanted a woman’s point of view.

  The female editors, Grace Coddington and Carlyne Cerf, were the important editors; this much was obvious. Although I didn’t feel competition with them, the New York office now carried an aura of overwhelming pressure.