It got designers thinking too. During New York Fashion Week, I had a memorable conversation with a big local name envious of the time and flexibility that Galliano was granted to produce the collection and the stupendous results. And just last night, Alexander Wang opened his own first show in a year-and-a-half with a character that looked like he could’ve been airlifted out of that Margiela collection, carrying a couple of bags of money and leering at the audience from under a top hat.
I’ve been a fashion watcher long enough to know that shows like Galliano’s Maison Margiela Artisanal are few and far between—and that the chance to recapture the rarest of feelings they give us is why we keep going back season after season. My colleague Sarah Mower has memorably described the sensation; it’s “the one where your stomach turns upside down, when you know you’re witnessing a fashion revolution taking place.”
Who knows who will ultimately land at Chanel, or the open position at Givenchy, for that matter? In March, Laia Garcia-Furtado, another colleague of mine, argued that a fashion vibe shift was imminent, that we were due one, in fact, considering that the last time fashion really rotated on its axis was when Gucci’s Alessandro Michele turned us all into magpie eccentrics, or maybe when Virgil Abloh landed at Louis Vuitton, as the first Black American man to hold such a position at a European luxury house.
Craig Green, who returned to the runway in London after a two-year hiatus yesterday with a deeply felt collection, is cogitating along similar lines. He said: “I’ve been thinking a lot about it—well, I think everyone is—about what the next stage of moving forward is in the next 10 years.” Whoever does get the job is poised to lead that vibe shift. As for me, all I can say is that I hope the decision makers are in pursuit of that elusive rarest of feelings too. More stomach backflips please!