John Galliano in conversation with Colin McDowell

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JG Bit Oliver Twist isn't it? Love that one. Oh, that was a very controversial collection. The clochards.

CM Why did people find that controversial?

JG I think they misunderstood it, because at this point I had started running and discovering what I called the 'wet world' in Paris. I was running by the Seine, and for me it was all very Marlon Brando, 'On The Waterfront'. There's a whole world by the Seine, and the buildings, the architecture looks completely different. Normally when you're in Paris it's all the 18th century stuff when you're on street level that's lit. Down there it's all the modern bridges and everything, and the 18th century goes back and it's a silhouette. It was very Marlon Brando, very exciting, and that's where I chanced upon these magnificent looking creatures, fantastic. In my head I'd imagined they'd say they'd chosen this, they weren't what they call the homeless people. I think there the DFS or something they call them. It wasn't that at all. There was one guy that I'd run past a lot and he just looked really majestic in these layers, I imagined him being an impresario at some point because he had that hat, the hair at times had been cut into a certain shape but had just grown like that now you know, but he still had cufflinks. They were all threadbare, he just looked amazing, and totally, totally out of this necessity came this style, and there I saw this, well some people might call her a 'bag lady'. To me she was a ballerina and she'd danced her last dance on the stage, and she'd taken all her favourite pieces under the bridge and she was living there now, because that's the way she wanted her life to be, she still had the stage make-up on, but she's started to wrap newspaper 'round her to keep her warm. It wasn't a tutu anymore, a slightly mad feel to it as well. Nothing but respect, and it was the romantic side of these people that. You know, I grew up with Charlie Chaplin that's the difference. I think some people took it the wrong way.

CM I think the Americans didn't understand it, they're very sensitive, over sensitive I think about many of these things, they really thought that you were making fun of the culture of art.

JG They couldn't be more wrong, it was the poetic side of how these people looked, and the romantic.

CM The poetic side and the grandeur and the dignity.

JG And the dignity, and the fact that they're brave enough to choose this fucking life do you know what I mean? Not all of them had been pushed into...

CM They'd walked away from society... .

JG And it's a reality, it's a reality. You know the sad thing that happened like a week after that show when I carried on running? They'd all be moved along, which was really sad.

CM So they'd been made helpless and homeless.

JG Well I hoped they'd been taken somewhere maybe, and I'm sure this summer they'll be back, but it is a reality and it did exist and it did inspire me.

CM I know, you can't clean everything up, this is the under belly of city life and this is what gives it's pulse you know. What I love about cities, particularly perhaps London, is... after bombs were dropped and flats were built, you could have really very poor people next to really very grand people. You could have houses worth a million right next to a council estate.

JG Well, it's like up town New York isn't it? You cross over that street and you're like there.

CM And you'd get this marvelous mix of people from the very poorest to the very grandest, and I think it's a terrible mistake to try to sweep the poor away. Have you ever been to India?

JG No, not yet no.

CM Oh, you'll have to go to India, India will blow your brains out.

JG Well, I'm glad you've just mentioned India, I'm really glad because I mean I thought how hypocritical a lot of the people that criticised this collection were. Because there were other designers in the past and even today that had gone to India, and there's extreme beauty and extreme poverty. But it was OK for them to do that you know, it was OK.

CM Because it's all a long way away.

JG Yeah, and when Monsieur Saint Laurent took Yugoslavian embroideries or... it's OK he could do that, or if someone could to Boho chic that was OK. I just thought 'how hypocritical', and gypsy was very vogue at the time and was featuring in a lot of magazines, you know they're people that have been driven out on and on and on.

CM That concept of being moved on.

JG Yeah, but that's OK, because it had I feel become a part of the fashion vocabulary, whereas the clochard hadn't quite yet, but it was nice. Do you know one of the things that really spurred me on to do it was that I was just fascinated with all the work that went on in the work that went on in the innards of these garments. You know, the herring bone stitch and the cross stitch, and all that. To show how beautiful that work is. Things weren't really ripped, that wasn't real newspaper you know that was printed on chiffon, I mean it called on all the amazing technical skill of the atelier to do that. Things weren't just torn but threads were pulled one by one, I mean it was like, it was very beautiful I thought, but interesting as well I think, an interesting one that one.

CM I think what it did was it got a little too near home, you know? I always do, I mean if I walk past someone who's begging, if I haven't got any money for the next couple of blocks I feel terrible, I feel racked with guilt, you feel like 'oh I'm going to go in and buy a packet of fags so I've got some change to go and give a bit'. I think that makes a lots of us uneasy, and you put it right in their faces, it's different if it's India, it's a long way away, it's different if it's gypsies because it's romanticised gypsies, but it was right on our doorstep. I thought it was a brilliant collection, courageous and marvelously conceived. I thought it was terrible that people didn't understand it, but that is always going to be the problem, and as you said earlier, you can't let that worry you, you have to do what you have to do.

JG No, I think one can become so sensible, I mean my goodness we'd get nowhere if we started to say 'what if so and so thinks, or we can't really do that because have you heard what's just happened in London?', and no, I don't think you'd get anywhere would you really? You have to do what you believe in.