It only comes but twice a year – that revered celebration of the majesty, artistry and craftsmanship of haute couture. This season brings many things – runway fantasies, celebrity sightings and Tossing Shirts’ semi-annual Couture Reading List. While typically this list features pithy installments for each collection, John Galliano’s masterful reverie for Maison Margiela, triggered a “go long” reaction. Whatever collection tickled your fancy, let your sartorial tastes guide your literary journey.
Maison Margiela: You believe in magic. Not of the rabbit-out-of-hat variety, but the real kind. The kind that happens when true creative genius reveals its wonders before your very eyes. Though rare, it does exist. You saw it last week in the misty, open-air nightclub set of John Galliano’s Maison Margiela Artisanal Collection. And you weren’t alone. The undisputed hit of the season, the show left traditional critics and the social-media fashion cognoscenti alike waxing poetic about Galliano’s hyper-corseted, often-sheer silhouettes, Pat McGrath’s brilliant plasticine maquillage and, well, everything else. It was a dazzling homage to the sultry, noirishness of Brassaï’s photos of underground Parisian nightlife, complete with delicate, nipple-bearing eveningwear and an oversized take on the classic street-flasher trench-coat-and-socks trope.
You were mad for this lush multimedia affair, which kicked off with a musical performance by Lucky Love and an S&M-tinged Britt Lloyd video before proceeding to the main event. And what an event it was. In an era when internet-breaking fashion-show moments tend to be either of the front-row Kardashian or the meme-first/fashion-second variety, what a balm to see Galliano, a maestro of gloriously unhinged beauty, command the conversation with dramatic, hauntingly gorgeous clothes presented in the context of compelling, decadent theater.
You nodded fervently along with the rapturous reviews. Yes, Cathy Horyn, this show indeed belongs “with the best Galliano collections.” Hear, hear, Vanessa Friedman, it was “a masterful demonstration of the couturier’s ability to reshape nature in service of a dream.” And indeed, Sarah Mower, “impressions from this show will be burned on the mind’s eye for many reasons.”
By the time Gwendoline Christie emerged in her rubber-accented white show-closing number, you were hungry for ways to keep the buzz from this collection going. But what to read? Something racy, perhaps, in a tribute to the dark eroticism on display? Maybe something gothic and haunting? Or a bawdy chronicle of night-crawling Continental youth? Any such direction might fit, but one thematic current has coursed through much of the euphoric, post-Margiela conversation these past few days. The show, with its staging, studiously offbeat model walks, and breathtaking fashion, was also a time machine of sorts. Confronted with a display that stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the mind-bending heights of Galliano’s 1990’s and early 2000’s run, you were thrown back to a different era: An era before fashion became an endless cycle of off-calendar capsule collections and creative collaborations. An era before the brand became king, when the designer still reigned. And so, inspired by a master offering a moment of involuntary memory, you turn to the masterwork of involuntary memory – Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, the first novel in his epic, seven-volume cycle, In Search of Lost Time. In Proust, it’s famously a cake and not a corset that sends the Narrator hurtling into his past. On a superficial level, you’re certain that had Odette, the beguiling courtesan who seduces the aristocratic Charles Swann, had the budget, she’d look absolutely beyond in these clothes. More important still, you know that this epic exploration of love, memory and artistry laced through with plenty of outré sensuality makes a fitting companion to Galliano’s new opus, and his work in general.
Galliano has often offered up a vision of beauty as unsettling, and at times upsetting, as it is awe-inducing. As Horyn put it, he is “a master at finding beauty in the misbegotten and the disreputable…It is really about a feeling of beauty.” It’s a gift bestowed on only the most brilliant of creators. One that reminds you of the abilities of Bergotte, a writer acquaintance of Proust’s Narrator with a similar superpower: “Whenever he spoke of something whose beauty had until then remained hidden from me, of pine-forests or of hailstorms, of Notre-Dame de Paris, of Athalie, or of Phèdre, by some piece of imagery he would make their beauty explode and drench me with its essence.” Proust might as well have been describing himself a century ago, or John Galliano a week ago. That’s why you’re tackling this great longread of the 20th century. A master deserves a master, after all.
Schiaparelli: You’ve got technology on the brain these days, just like fashion avant-garde-ist Daniel Roseberry, whose turn for Schiaparelli spoke to your inner sci-fi nerd. These looks featured details that hinted at a cybernetic future – from a spin on the maison’s iconic “skeleton dress” (which looked like something Elsa S. might have conceived of after chicly merging with the Borg) to that robot baby. In these heady days of AI, the tech elements prompted you to consider some uncomfortable questions about what it means to be human. Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep? (later adapted into the film Blade Runner) offers little in the way of comfort on this notion; it’s an on-theme, if disquieting, read. Sure, the replicants that down-on his-luck bounty hunter Richard Decker chases aren’t as artfully outfitted as Roseberry’s ladies, but, in their own unnerving way, they’re no less beguiling.
Dior: Long a devotee of artist partnerships, Maria Grazia Chiuri this season enlisted textile artist Isabella Ducrot, whose installation Big Aura provided the backdrop for Dior’s spring couture. The soundtrack featured a play – conceived by Ducrot – starring the Warp and the Weft of cloth. Warp and Weft’s audio romance piqued your interest and left you craving more. More what? More inscrutable absurdist theater, of course! Look no further than Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, which will satisfy your desire to alternate between shouting “brilliant,” and shrugging “huh?” with each scene.
Valentino: You’ve always felt that sophisticated dressing need not mean cleaving to muted neutrals only. You and Pierpaolo Piccioli are kindred spirits in that way. For the latest Valentino collection, Piccioli worked his love of varied hues – combinations of bold jewel tones, pastels and, yes, some grays and blacks. Add some depth to your passion for color by diving into Interaction of Color by legendary educator and artist Josef Albers. His assertion may be correct that “color deceives continually.” Great taste, however, does not.
Chanel - Your heart did a grand jeté over Virginie Viard’s ballet looks. You’re a sucker for an overtly worked theme and girlish adornments aplenty, with chiffon embellishments, white tights and frothy tulle taking center stage. Alas, a dearth of talent keeps your dance dreams just that – a dream – so you turn to Sigrid Nunez’s 2021 novel A Feather on the Breath of God, whose unnamed narrator finds temporary refuge from her chaotic home life in the ordered world of the ballet studio. Nunez’s work is deftly wrought, deeply emotional and certainly several shades more sophisticated than Angelina Ballerina.
Armani Privé: You admire Giorgio Armani for thinking broadly. Why show a few looks when you can show 92? Why dress one type of well-heeled woman when you can dress them all? To that end, why have one story when you can have 100? One of Mr. Armani’s fellow Italians, Giovanni Boccaccio, agreed. In his The Decameron, written in the 14th century, ten wealthy young things seek refuge from the Black Plague in a swanky, if abandoned, villa. They pass their time spinning yarns about randy nuns, bold knights and, well, plenty more. You get it: True in quarantine and true on the runway – variety is the spice of life.
Louis Vuitton Men’s: You were inspired by Pharrell Williams’ take on Western Americana. Kicking things off with a performance by Native Voices of Resistance, Williams merged the Stetson-topped stereotype with a more historically accurate, multicultural vision of the cowboy persona. (He also worked in touches of his instantly signature digital camo, which read more contemporary streetwear than old-timey saloon.) As the designer noted backstage, “You never really get to see what some of the original cowboys looked like…They looked like me. They were Black and they were Native American.” After this, you’re eager to dive into an interesting spin on the classic road novel with Gerald Vizenor’s Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles, a much-heralded 1990 work of the Native American Renaissance. Vizenor’s post-apocalyptic story remixes the classic Canterbury Tales-style pilgrimage narrative with Pueblo and Anishinaabe trickster tropes as it follows Proude Cedarfair and his band of “circus-pilgrims” on a satirical quest. That hand-painted desert-flower Speedy bag may be out of your price range, but Vizenor’s eye-opening work can be picked up at your local library for free.
Fendi: You appreciate Kim Jones’s craft-over-flash approach to couture. No matter how simple the garment may seem at first blush, the true beauty lies in the meticulous, some might say obsessive, attention to detail. No surprise then, that you’re a fan of a literary purveyor of seemingly minimalist work wrought from incalculable sweat-equity: Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms exemplifies Hemingway’s devotion to carefully considered simplicity. Echoing Jones’s more stripped-down pieces, Hemingway’s wartime masterpiece relies heavily on the author’s bare-bones prose style. But sparse stylings finely rendered require great effort; Hemingway claimed that he rewrote the novel’s final lines “39 times before I was satisfied.” Spoken like a true couturier.
Viktor & Rolf: You like your high fashion with a dash of eccentricity. So do Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, who approached their collection with something of a mad-scientist, slice-and-dice attitude. They put out a show in seven parts, each section featuring a polished, completed look followed by three versions in various states of slashed-to-bits disarray. Decomposition has never looked so fantastic. Like Horsting and Snoeren, you love to flip an idea on its head every once in a while, so you’re going with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – a seminal work of re-composition in which multiple elements (body parts in this case) are put together in service of realizing one grand, dangerously eccentric vision.
Simone Rocha for Jean Paul Gaultier: You loved watching Simone Rocha riff on Gaultier’s signatures – tattoo prints, sailor hats, cone bras (of course) – infusing them with her own subversive, fairytale romance. You sensed intrigue in accents of blood red (a hallmark Rocha hue) and bustiers with a devil-horn bent. In her short story collection, The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter puts a dark spin on classic yarns like Beauty and the Beast and Puss and Boots. Sure, these stories are bleaker than their Disney-fied counterparts, but they’re more grown-up and layered, too. Just like the wondrous looks of Rocha’s first ever couture turn.