John Galliano in conversation with Colin McDowell

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JG Stella, look at Stella.

CM Tell us about the collection of this one.

JG That was from the Pocahontas-inspired collection.

CM This was the one that was at the station (Gare d'Austerlitz).

JG That's right, that's right.

CM Could you talk a little bit about that.

JG Who was that by, that was CÈcile Henri, which was amazing because what they do is they reproduce a warp and weft but very, very loosely. So, imagine a normal piece of fabric but then you magnify that up so you can see the holes right through it, then each yarn is laid on, so you can imagine each time you thread a yarn through like that, which is a silk yarn which is moving everywhere. You have to get it completely flat before you can put the next one in and third and forth and so on and so on, to build up that design, and we wanted that very native American colour so we worked very closely with our dyers and they buried various berries and things which were then used to produce the dye for that silk yarn.

CM Really?

JG Oh yeah, it was totally authentic, a lot of people wouldn't know that but these berries were buried and then they were brought up and treated. There's no chemicals, that's why the colours look so authentic.

CM This is nervous breakdown stuff the amount of work involved.

JG That really took a lot of, yeah, it took a lot of work but it's a beautiful piece.

CM Let's talk a little bit about that collection. Why did you decide to have it in the station?

JG It was the true story of Pocahontas, and if I rack my brain a bit, what was it? Who was it that went over to some amazing island and bumped into her and they kidnapped her and took her away? I mean it was a true story I can't, but that's that shape really. There's a kind of skirt and the dresses that were following that silhouette. We just thought it would make a magnificent, almost cinematic backdrop to the clothes. It puzzled people that collection, it just puzzled them. It was hot, a terribly hot day.

CM But I love it because there was a marvelous feeling, you brought in American culture with Pocahontas, you brought in as an Elizabethan cut and there was a lovely feeling of Casablanca about it.

JG The souks.

CM The mise en scene was brilliant.

JG Yeah, it was a nice...

CM It's actually one of my favourite collections but I know a lot of people...

JG All of us, for Bill, for Stephen, whenever people say that... without a doubt we say 'Pocahontas'. Pocahontas, and still people say 'why?'. They have to look at the pieces, we learnt a lot.

CM The colours and the workmanship was extraordinary.

JG Yeah, it was extraordinary.

CM Quite extraordinary.

JG It was extraordinary.

CM With the Elizabethan inspired doing all the...

JG Yeah, and then how fantastic it looked when those doublets if you like, were then interpreted in leather and spliced and cut. I thought some of it looked like really modern, really sexual really.

CM And of course it came back into your collection this time, your couture collection.

JG Yeah it did. It's funny that you know because afterwards we were talking about. Yeah, it did look a bit of a, it was going into that territory of folklore and Ballet Russe... (an) area that I'd gone (into) a little bit before. Then afterwards when we looked back it was like 'how did this all, don't know how it all'... Russia, Russia, funny isn't it?

CM Yeah, it is extraordinary how things keep coming back, reinterpreted maybe, I think that's what marvelous, if you look at the work of someone like Picasso, he didn't keep doing endlessly new things he kept redeveloping things.

JG He had his periods though.

CM Yes, but within those periods he would look at things in a new way, and... what I think you've done, you took things from this collection...

JG But not consciously, because we thought that after, we were like 'oh but this is like this', and someone had said that it was old territory that had already been gone down by so and so and so and so... however we'd done it superbly, but not consciously. Had we though 'oh right, Ballet Russe, Leon Bakst, Russia', it wasn't conscious. Then afterwards we were like 'well, it is territory that has been, people have gone down there before'.

CM But never in the same way because the way you view it is quite different from anybody else, so within it you're still viewing it in different ways.