Christian Dior haute couture f/w 2005

A black-draped horse-drawn carriage arrived through the gates of a ruined Edwardian garden where cobwebs festooned broken statues, fallen chandeliers, and clumps of lily of the valley. Lo! It’s the ghost of Madame Dior arriving with her little sailor-suited boy, Christian, whose birthday fell 100 years ago.

Thus John Galliano took the opportunity to revisit the rich and romantic story of the house he has inherited and reinvented for the twenty-first century. And for once, the narrative fantasist in him didn’t drive his horse and carriage down hard-to-follow byways or wildly irreverent culs-de-sac. Rather, the collection was transparently arranged as homage to Dior’s couture, from the fin-de-siècle influence of his mother’s gowns through the makings of the New Look, with walk-on parts for his workers, fashion editors, and the extraordinary roster of clients who flocked to him in the fifties.                -Sarah Mower