The year couldn’t end without another industry-rattling departure in the fashion world. On Wednesday, John Galliano, one of the last consensus megastar designers, stepped down from his post as artistic director of Maison Margiela.
Mr. Galliano, 64, who had spent a decade at the Parisian fashion house, announced his departure in a discursive Instagram post that began by noting that he was 14 years sober.
“The rumors… everyone wants to know, and everyone wants to dream,” Mr. Galliano wrote early in his statement, staring down the growing chatter that he was departing Margiela for even loftier pastures while emphasizing that such issues will be discussed at a later date.
He added: “For now, I take this time to express my immense gratitude.”
The post concluded with a brooding photo of the ever-theatrical Mr. Galliano, wedged between a sewing machine and a mannequin as he smoked a cigarette beside an open window.
“Working with John was one of the most significant and impactful experiences of my life,” Renzo Rosso, the chairman of Margiela’s owner, the OTB Group, said in a statement. “Our industry has a habit of thinking in decades and these 10 years of incredibly intense work, amazing shows and installations, extraordinarily beautiful product, have laid the foundations for the future of Maison Margiela which I am very excited about.”
Mr. Galliano’s successor was not announced.
During his time at Margiela, Mr. Galliano showed fanciful collections that often felt like a time warp back to a more subversive era of luxury fashion. He presented his collections as art pieces — a “Folk Horror Tale” film for one show, a maison-wide installation of mannequins for another.
His final “artisanal” show, in particular, staged under the Pont Alexandre III bridge in Paris in January, was a stirring display: corseted male models, translucent gowns with gravity- and anatomic-defying proportions and bouffant dresses that recalled deconstructed mattresses. It was a romantic exhibition, fusing allusions to Parisian nightclubs of the 1920s with runway cameos from stars like the statuesque actress Gwendoline Christie.
The show left audiences stunned and earned Mr. Galliano some of the most breathless reviews of his long career. A YouTube video of the show has been viewed more than two million times.
But Mr. Galliano had swanned into Margiela on a dust cloud of controversy. Throughout the ’90s, 2000s, and 2010s, Mr. Galliano, who was born in Gibraltar and studied at London’s famed Central Saint Martins school of fashion design, steered the ateliers of two of the world’s weightiest labels, first Givenchy and later Dior.
During this period, he was the very picture of a rock star designer as he whipped up cosmically creative collections that left critics and editors in a frenzy. He was at once a mad scientist of tulle — fabricating storybook dresses that would have made Marie Antoinette blush — and a commercial crackerjack, who chimed in hit bags and prints for Dior, which then and now is the crown of LVMH’s luxury empire.
During this period, Mr. Galliano leaned headlong into his image as a great showman. He would take his runway bows in over-the-top outfits that looked as if they were plucked from the wardrobe department of a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical and conduct rambling interviews while dragging dramatically on cigarettes.
Then came what the fashion world will forever refer to as Galliano’s incident. In early 2011, a video surfaced of a drunken Mr. Galliano directing an antisemitic rant toward patrons at a Parisian bar. The condemnation for the episode was swift and decisive. Within days, Mr. Galliano was out of his job as creative director of Dior. He had finally pushed his bad boy image too far.
Mr. Galliano entered rehab and met with Jewish rights groups, but for several years he was in the occupational wilderness. Eventually, as Mr. Galliano’s Instagram post this week recounted, Mr. Rosso tapped him to take over Maison Margiela, which had been without a named creative director since its founder, the Belgian designer Martin Margiela, departed the brand in 2009.
“In front of this gentleman, I had an epiphany: I was ready,” Mr. Galliano wrote in his post, which went on to thank his “A” team at the Margiela atelier. During his tenure at Margiela, Mr. Galliano was conspicuously less conspicuous. He did not appear for the customary bow at the end of his shows, and he became tight-lipped to the news media.
Last year, “High & Low: John Galliano,” a documentary on his discriminatory comments, subsequent shunning from the industry and eventual return, provided audiences a thorough look at the designer’s psyche. Exemplifying the long shadow of his antisemitic rant over Mr. Galliano’s career, some reviewers expressed that Mr. Galliano’s grappling with his past comments was insufficient.
That cloud hasn’t stopped Mr. Galliano’s name from again surfacing among the potential contenders for another creative director role, perhaps even back at an LVMH brand. In his statement, Mr. Galliano hinted that his next job might already be in the works. “When the time is right,” he wrote, “all will be revealed.”
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