John Galliano proved his genious again by introducing lingerie as a light motif into his RTW Spring Fashion collection. He said he was inspired by Lauren Bacall: “She was a great Dior client; there are amazing photos of her in the salon with Bogart. It was that and Arletty in Hôtel du Nord,” he said. That central character in his spring collection 2010 is the provocative femme fatale with a side-parted, over-one-eye hairdo and red lips. It started with wartime trench coats, flipped through silver lamé dresses, arrived at a sequence in which the heroine is seen in her scanties, and then followed her out to make a drop-dead entrance in some nightclub or other.
Galliano presents us also French lace-trimmed cami-knickers and satin teddies—into a contemporary version of this summer’s shorts and playsuits, fragile flowered chiffon dresses. The transparencies—such as a purple satin bra-and-knicker set, apparently seen through black tulle—were an illusion created by stretch, paneled under layers, so that the pieces are actually slipped on in one. Stocking tops seen through the sheer panels in a copper lamé dress, and bras and panties peeping under a semitransparent tiered blue gown, were actually shadows stitched into underslips.
