With Jonathan Anderson’s departure from Loewe sparking whispers of his potential move to Dior, the industry is once again gripped by its favourite spectacle: the grand reshuffling of creative directors. Designers come and go, each leaving their imprint, but few arrivals have permeated through fashion’s consciousness quite like John Galliano’s debut for Dior in Spring/Summer 1997. As speculation mounts over Dior’s next chapter, it’s impossible not to revisit the collection that turned haute couture into high theatre.
A House on the Brink, A Designer in His Prime
By the late ‘90s, Dior was prestigious but resting on old glories. It was a House in need of propulsion, not preservation. Enter Galliano - a designer with an appetite for extravaganza and a reverence for history, yet wholly unafraid to dismantle it. The stakes were clear: take Dior beyond its gilded past and thrust it into a new century of relevance.
Galliano’s opening act was nothing short of operatic. Inspired by the Marchesa Luisa Casati - an aristocratic enigma known for walking pet cheetahs and dousing herself in pearls - the collection was an opulent hallucination of bias-cut silks, diaphanous layers, and baroque embellishments. Models emerged like ghostly relics from a forgotten world, their bodies sculpted into silhouettes that felt as much apparition as couture.
It was a shift in fashion’s gravitational pull. Where Dior had once signified rigid refinement, Galliano introduced movement, sensuality, and a kind of magnificence that felt untamed. The clothes shimmered like oil paintings come to life, fabric clinging and cascading in ways that made couture feel liquid rather than constructed. This was no mere homage to Dior’s heritage - it was an unspooling of it, an invitation to see the house through an entirely new lens.
When Couture Became a Spectacle
To call this collection a ‘show’ feels reductive. Galliano’s Dior was never just about the clothes - it was a transportive experience. The Spring/Summer 1997 presentation blurred the lines between fashion, performance, and cinema, treating the runway as a stage where history, fantasy, and modernity collided.
But beyond the theatrics was a technical mastery that remains unmatched. The draping was impossibly precise, the embellishments excessive yet never weighty, the references decadent but distilled into something undeniably new. Galliano didn’t just mine history for inspiration; he made it feel immediate, urgent, and alive.
The Endless Game of Musical Chairs
Nearly three decades later, the industry remains obsessed with its game of creative director roulette. As Jonathan Anderson exits Loewe, speculation of his move to Dior fuels the same conversations that surrounded Galliano’s appointment in 1996 - who is capable of reinventing a House so steeped in legacy? Who dares to dismantle it and rebuild something even greater?
Anderson, much like Galliano before him, has spent the last decade refining his own lexicon of craft, surrealism, and conceptual rigour. His tenure at Loewe has been an exercise in sculptural play and material subversion, proving that heritage can be distorted, reshaped, and still remain intact. If Dior is once again on the cusp of transformation, it’s worth remembering how electrifying that moment can be when the right designer enters at the right time.
