global gaultier

when you ask people what their favorite decade was in fashion you'll get a lot of eighties from kids who still think legwarmers and shaved patterns on their heads are still cool. the sixties from fashion kids who wants to look like francoise hardy and serge gainsbourgh. or the seventies from indie kids who actually has no interest in fashion at all. anyways, my favorite decade was the nineties. not the early nineties all the boombox wannabee kids at circa think constitutes of wearing head to toe h&m, but mid to late nineties. when galliano was starting to show his collections in a more theatrical mode and prada's geek chic aesthetic was changing the direction of fashion. most of my favorite collections are from this decade, and two of them happens to be from the same designer and was shown back to back for spring/summer 1994, and fall/winter 1994. when people think of multi-culturalism as a reference point, they immediately think galliano or dries van noten. but who can forget gaultiers tattoo and piercing inspired collection based on indian costume and the subculture of body modification and the mongolian inspired show he presented six months later. i love when designers think of ideas outside their own familiar environment and add it to their vocabulary and it becomes something new and in the end, totally their own. if gaultier was a couturier then and he designed a couture collection based on these two influences, i would've shed tears.