French fashion houses are known to sit at the top of the food chain in the fashion world and Cristian Dior, better known today as Dior, is one of the biggest beasts of all. Founded in 1956 by designer Christian Dior, the label is known for being a staple of haute couture since its’ establishment. Famous for creating shapes and silhouettes, Dior was a master at construction and details that initially gave his models a curvaceous look with the attention focused on tiny waists and proper attire. Long after Dior’s death, designer John Galliano took the helm of the brand in 1996 after a previous two-year stint at Givenchy. Galliano today is someone who shaped the fashion industry. He is also someone who has always been in the spotlight, whether for good or bad. In the year 2000, Galliano designed for Dior a pair of newspaper-print leather gloves that defined and reflected how he thought the media and world saw him, and how only he could control his image first and foremost.
Today, the gloves are exhibited in A History of Fashion in 100 Objects at the Fashion Museum Bath in England. As labeled in the title of the exhibition, the gloves truly reflect a moment in Galliano’s career as he used Dior and its style to write his own story. The 20-year-old leather gloves allow viewers to read, quite literally, Galliano’s thoughts and statements of the current media height and surrounding culture. Leather gloves themselves as quite a normal staple for Dior and quite appropriately for the year 2000 when the inspiration of the fashion industry itself was wacky and modern with hints of historical fashion. From the smoothness of the top grain of the gloves, they were made of calf leather, especially considering how thin the material would have to be to fit on a women’s hand and allow for mobility of her fingers. There’s no top stitching, which is an ode to Dior’s clean aesthetic and wanting to hide an evidence of construction to give the item a luxury appeal, even though such an intricate thing was handmade. Though the inside of the gloves is not shown, there should be a lining of light silk as that would, again, be a staple of Dior’s choice of construction and necessary to protect the hands from the coarseness of the suede or underside of the leather.
What is most important though, is the newspaper print on top of the gloves. The print depicts a typical remnant of a newspaper through the font type, size and spacing, the multiple column of text and lines and layout details. The first thing to catch someone’s eyes is Galliano’s name printed largely right underneath the thumb. The word Gazette is printed across the palm in the typical Helvetica font, consisting of decorative letters. It’s interesting to note the lack of Christian Dior’s name. This is because though the gloves were made for Dior, and this is found though the construction itself, the print of the gloves is used to playfully throwback the media’s scrutiny of Galliano, in a quite docile embodiment of gloves for a woman.
The custom-wrapped newspaper box houses the gloves within carefully wrapped silk newspaper-print paper, mimicking the print on the gloves to a more literal extent. It’s the perfect companion and almost equally as important in statement as the gloves themselves. The box light-tan colored box depicts a traditional newspaper, titled International Galliano Gazette. It includes articles like, “Let Uncle Send-Me-The-Bill explain all…,” “The Show Must Go On…,” and “Culture vulture.” Each title gives away a bit of Galliano’s personality and ease in picking at himself as he quite clearly knows what the media and would expect of him.
Like most on top, the media watches carefully and scrutinizes anything that could lead to moving along a story. For example, the article titled “Culture vulture” and “The Show Must Go On…” could be about the extreme pressure on designers to fabricate new collections 6-12 times per year. Any designer would be burnt out from the weight of the job itself, but for someone who is carefully being watched who sits at the very top of one of the biggest fashion houses is the world the burden must be unimaginable. Yet, Galliano stands strong and uses his artform of designing within the brand of Dior to showcase his own story and the truth of himself.