Galliano (John)

Designer. Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur (January 1, 2009)

A graduate of St Martin’s School, John Galliano was a creative director for haute couture and ready-to-wear collections at Givenchy before taking charge of haute couture and women’s ready-to-wear,  then all womens-wear lines at Dior, where he also supervises the image for Dior perfumes and runs the John Galliano brand. He dressed Carla Bruni-Sarkozy for her trip to England. Twenty-five  years after launching his first label, John Galliano retains an exuberance and a sense of humor that he is now able to combine with a certain classicism. The British designer, son of a plumber of Italian origin and a lover of clothes and flamenco of Spanish origin,  was born Juan Carlos Antonio Galliano in 1960, in Gibraltar, and grew up in working-class Battersea. It was in this poor suburb of London that the stylist with the pirate look grew up surrounded by African, Asian and Indian families.  As a reminder of that, his first collection was named Afghanistan Repudiates Western Ideals followed a few years later by the catwalk show Clochards (”Tramps”).