John Galliano, creative director of Maison Margiela, talks to Susannah Frankel about returning to the stage with the label’s Autumn/Winter 2022 Artisanal collection – and the show of the season.
SUSANNAH FRANKEL
Why did you choose to show in this format? To stage a play?
JOHN GALLIANO
I was listening to my instinct, Susannah. Following the lockdown period, which pushed us all to investigate the possibilities of digital formats, I sensed a profound desire for physicality. But after everything we experienced during the pandemic – our collective discoveries and evolvements – it didn’t seem relevant to return to a runway. I wanted to create a proposal informed by the investigations made through our filmic work with Olivier Dahan and Nick Knight, a multidisciplinary format that would reflect the connectivity for which we all hanker, whether we’re on the front row of a show or watching it on a screen. Cinema Inferno was my way of embracing the cultures of fashion, performance and the virtual world through a construct at once digital and physical. It transcended the traditions of a play, but because geography required a space in central Paris, we chose to present it in a theatre.
SF In some ways, a theatre with an audience is a more extreme return to physicality than a traditional runway show. Was the idea a reaction to not having shown physically for more than two years?
JG If it were a reaction to the events of the past two years, it was a yearning to stay on the path of exploration that the lockdown period instigated. It didn’t feel natural to ignore those discoveries and return to what we once knew. Leave those runway glasses – those one-way glasses – at the door. Theatre played a part in that transition, but my intention wasn’t simply to stage a play. With Cinema Inferno I wanted to embrace and unite many different cultures and formats and propose a different way of seeing. It was narrative storytelling presented on a stage and captured in film but revealing – and integrating – all the makings and mechanics of theatre and filmmaking in a way true to the genetics of Maison Margiela.
SF Although at Margiela, on the runway, the theatre has principally been in the clothes. You have always been interested
