PFW: John Galliano, Marchesa Casati for the Instagram era

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Mar 6, 2017

The marchesa’s mood and style was apparent in nearly every look in a show that starred bold broken floral jacquard party dresses, dramatic bronzed gold double-breasted jackets and burnt orange silk pantsuits.
 

“Casati! Which we have done before here, almost 20 years ago when we looked it up. I began by looking at old photos, especially one of her very extremely dressed,” explained Galliano’s designer Bill Gaytten.
 
This was a boldly-hued show, with acres of lamé, jacquard and fur, whose attention-seeking qualities seemed ideal for our Instagram era. Casati shocked and delighted European high society for the first three decades of the 20th century, eccentrically and famously saying, “I want to be a living work of art.” A wish that could equally apply to the millions of fashion fanatics that the Internet has spawned in our own times.
 

It helps that Gaytten is an expert constructor and cutter of high fashion, sending out a string of great coats and jackets in what the house termed “Bias blip,” or a three-dimensional bias that is not so figure-hugging. He draped coats and jackets with panache, working in lots of clever smocking, in some great work by his atelier. Plus his front row all looked rather marvelous – notably Olga Kurylenko in a pink bias-cut slip cocktail – smoldering inside the Salon France Amérique on avenue Franklin Roosevelt.

Worn by a cast with marvelous pagoda-style hats by ace milliner Stephen Jones, it all made for a fine fashion statement. In a word, the house of Galliano is alive and well. Luisa Casati would be happy.