I went to see the Galliano film

A feast for the mind, as well as the eyes

I went to see High & Low, the film about John Galliano and found it transportingly good.

And I use transporting deliberately, because it was a bit like getting in a time machine for me.

I’m not going to share too many details, because I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anyone who might watch it – and if you have even a passing interest in fashion, or in art of any kind, I highly recommend it. Apart from everything else, it’s really beautifully made.

Here’s the trailer.

I was hooked from the first moment, because it starts with a phone video of one of the two terrible anti-Semitic hate attacks Galliano made on total strangers sitting next to him where he was drinking in Café Perle, near his house in le Marais, in Paris.

That immediate confrontation of the ugly truth – exactly what is so lacking in most coverage of the actual Nazi spy, Coco Chanel – was so the right thing to do.

Along with his dizzying brilliance, it’s the equal subject of the film, conveyed in a way that, while making no justification for his behaviour, the analysis of it doesn’t mar the appreciation of the shining star of his work.

Of course, the film was also thrilling to me on a personal level, because I’m an exact contemporary of Mr Galliano and lived the whole arc of his career in parallel to my own.

He went to St Martin’s with friends of mine – and I was at many of the shows featured in the film.

So, it was quite magical to watch it all unfolding again, from that first astonishing degree show, Les Incroyables, all of which my friend Joan Burstein (Mrs B) bought for her legendary boutique Browns. She put it in every one of the long-run of the shop’s windows along South Molton Street.

A moment from that amazing St Martin’s degree show.

Then moving on to his triumph at the very top of Paris couture Christian Dior, where he had no financial limit to his creative expression and he really made the most of it.

The work was simply astonishing.

I love this clip of him showing a young Kate Moss how to bring the dress alive on the catwalk.

Which made his tragic descent into depraved alcoholism and prescription drug addiction all the harder to watch – and I keenly noted that the director understood the significance of his end-of-show applause runway walks, which became a thing all of their own.

Not so much over the top, as swinging from it on a sparkly trapeze.

I remember being at one of the shows for his own label Galliano, in Paris, when he arrived on the catwalk at the end, lowered on a half shell and I remember thinking, ‘This is going too far now… it’s a distraction.’

It was a great vehicle to show his spiral down into detachment from reality.

I won’t describe how things unfolded after his great fall (I want you all to see the film…), but there are some very special and deeply wise people in the film talking about their personal reactions to his anti-Semitic diatribes and his subsequent attempts to rehabilitate himself.

In the current climate where anti-Semitism seems to have become almost normalised in some people’s minds, it was a very meaningful thing to listen to. I was particularly touched by this man, Rabbi Barry Moses.

Two other things really stay with me from the film.

At the peak of his career, when he was doing his own label, Dior and Dior couture, John Galliano designed 32 collections a year. 32.

That’s insane in itself – then add to it a detail mentioned right at the start of the film, that after the high of every collection coming out, he would have a mini collapse and drown himself in drink.

It seemed clear to me that if he’d carried on working at that level he would have joined his compatriot Alexander McQueen and his own right-hand man, Steven Robinson, in an early death. McQueen by his own hand, Robinson from a cocaine overdose.

Which made me wonder if, at some very deep unconscious level Galliano sabotaged himself in order to survive, which is no excuse for the terrible things he said, but might explain it.

The other thing I can’t forget is what we hear Monsieur Bernard Arnault say, when asked if he is pleased with his new Dior designer.

‘With every collection he does we sell 50% more,’ he said.

Which shows where his interest in fashion lies. Money and nothing but. Which is, of course, why he is currently the richest man in the world, worth $233 billion.

Mr Galliano was fortunate to escape that treadmill of greed alive – and while I understand why some people will never be able to forgive his behaviour, from what I’ve seen in the film I think he has humbled, educated and redeemed himself.

Which makes it all the more glorious that he is now creating what just might end up being his best work yet, for Maison Margiela.

Free from Arnault’s luxury chain store set up, which was for Galliano a very highly-paid sweatshop, his astonishing gifts can soar unbound.

See the most recent show, here.

Thank you to Josephine Fairley for getting the tickets to the film - without which I might have missed it.