John Galliano's transformation from social pariah to reconstituted couturier is in full swing. As expected, tomorrow he'll tape an hour, without breaks, on the Charlie Rose show, to be aired in the near future on PBS. It's thought that no topic will be off limits.
He follows in the footsteps of fellow designers Oscar de la Renta (who helped nab the gig), Tom Ford, and Marc Jacobs — though none who's had to claw their way back the way Galliano has. Meanwhile, arriving on newsstands now, the July issue of Vanity Fair contains a lengthy, quite revealing interview with Galliano by Ingrid Sischy.
You know it's a seasonal news lull when a vaguely familiar-sounding rumor gathers steam. A bit of speculation making the rounds, and picked up by WWD, concerns that favorite topic of rumor-mongering, Marc Jacobs, who some say may be stepping down from Louis Vuitton to head up a label closer to home, Coach, replacing Reed Krakoff. The theory goes that Jacobs' contract negotiations with LVMH are well under way (2014 will be the end of his initial 10-year term) — and whether he stays or leaves, having a Coach offer, or the prospect of one, in your back pocket couldn't hurt.
Ok, ok, it doesn't sound especially likely to us either, but here's where it gets interesting. It would clear the way for Nicolas Ghesquière to take the helm at Louis Vuitton. Fortunately for him, if a lack of financial support was an issue at Balenciaga, it wouldn't even be a moment's pause at Vuitton, with its vast resources and cash on hand. This could happen even if Marc Jacobs doesn't go to Coach and instead focuses all his energies on a long-supposed IPO, along the lines of Michael Kors's exemplary public offering. So you may want to start pooling your PBR money now to buy a share or two. Time to dust off that old E-Trade account.
Vanity Fair got the get that everyone wanted. In its July 2013 issue, arriving in mailboxes now, contributing editor Ingrid Sischy met with the designer several times in what amounted, he says, to the first interview he has given sober. Certainly it's his first interview since his anti-Semitic remarks in 20111 that catalyzed mass outrage and his firing from Dior.
In the piece, Galliano in the Wilderness, he explains how alcohol and drug abuse, brought on by a grueling schedule, turned him into a monster. “I would use [alcohol] to crash after the collections," he says. "I’d take a couple of days to get over it, like everyone. But with more collections, the crash happened more often, and then I was a slave to it. Then the pills kicked in because I couldn’t sleep. Then the other pills kicked in because I couldn’t stop shaking. I would also have these huge bottles of liquor that people got for me. Towards the end, it was whatever I could get my hands on.”
He describes in gruesome detail the lows he reached: "I did manage to stop the voices. I had all these voices in my head, asking so many questions, but I never for one second would admit I was an alcoholic. I thought I could control it ... I would be backstage and there would be a queue of five people to help me. One person would have a cigarette for me. The next person would have the lighter. I did not know how to use the ATM." It seems there was no end to his downward spiral. Ultimately, “not having washed, I’d be covered in sores and humiliated.”
On finding out about his racial slurs, he says, “When everyone came over to tell me that I had done these terrible things, I was walking round and round and round not really knowing what had gone down. My assistant told me about the video. When I saw it, I threw up. The feeling was like I was about to take a step out onto the street and a bus or truck whooshed past me and the blood was drained from my legs. I was paralyzed from the fear.”
In his Arizona rehab facility, staff confiscated pretty much everything he brought, including the Keith Richards memoir, Life. When he was allowed his a short phone call, he called Bill Gaytten, who had filled in for him at the John Galliano label, just before the Galliano fashion show began in Paris. “Bill said, ‘Do you realize what you’ve fucking done?' and I said, ‘Kind of.’ But I still didn’t. I couldn’t say yes. I just couldn’t. And those were the last words we shared. That’s someone I’ve known for 30 years. Even now I’m still learning every day how many people I hurt.” When it came time for Galliano's first visitors weekend, Linda Evangelista was the only friend to make the trek. “I just didn’t want that weekend to go by without anyone reaching out to him,” she told Sischy.
Of all the great things Joan Rivers is — hilarious, wise, bitchy, generous, crude, loyal — perhaps what stands out the most is her trooper attitude. We remember when she hosted the Clio Awards in advertising last year, a job that demanded a lot of speaking and stand-up comedy, not just waiting in the wings. She was very ill with a cold, but was able to rally and carry the night like a pro, even if her already gravely voice was inaudibly gravely for a lot of it. She addressed her hoarseness with a couple of blow job gags and the crowd was hers.
To Joan, the joke must go on, whether it's about the indignities of aging, the absurdity of sex, the stupidity of celebrity (and celebrities), or the folly of fashion. At the end of the day, as she said to a heckler in the 2010 documentary A Piece of Work, "Let me tell you what comedy is about. Comedy is to let people laugh at everything and deal with things." And so, to help her laugh in the face of 80, we've collected her funniest jokes over the years...
“I can't like watching Project Runway with Heidi Klum. There's just something wrong about a German woman saying who goes and who stays.”
“I blame my mother for my poor sex life. All she told me was 'the man goes on top and the woman underneath.' For three years my husband and I slept in bunk beds.”
“A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp.”
“Anyone who takes [fashion] seriously is a fool. Anna Wintour, just take your broom and stick it up your ass.”
"If you don’t want gays in the military, make the uniforms ugly."
"Everyone thinks Angelina Jolie was the first celebrity baby hoarder, but she wasn't. Before Angelina there was Mia Farrow. Mia had an entire farm full of children. I think she got them at Costco."
"Bo Derek turned down the role of Helen Keller because she couldn't remember the lines."
"I said to my husband, 'Why don't you call out my name when we're making love?' He said, 'I don't want to wake you up.'"
"I hate thin people: 'Oh, does the tampon make me look fat?'"
"I might like Parisians more if they named their streets only for gay icons, like Rue Liza Minnelli or Rue Bette Midler or, my favorite, Rue McClanahan."
"My husband wanted to be cremated. I told him I'd scatter his ashes at Neiman Marcus. That way, I'd visit him every day."
"My boobs are so low I had to put curb feelers on my nipples!"
"The fashion magazines are suggesting that women wear clothes that are 'age appropriate'. For me that would be a shroud."
"I was dating a transvestite, and my mother said, 'Marry him, you'll double your wardrobe.'"
"Grandchildren can be fucking annoying. How many times can you go, 'And the cow goes moo and the pig goes oink?' It's like talking to a supermodel."
"Mick Jagger could French-kiss a moose. He has child-bearing lips."
"I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware."
A moody cross between Florence Welch and The XX (and maybe early Portishead), London Grammar doesn't yet have a full album to their name. But the trio of college friends — fronted my the very camera-ready Hannah Reid — are staking out a soulful, doleful territory that many bands try to, but few can, inhabit. This heartbreak of a new single, Wasting My Young Years (out June 16, pre-order here), finds an angsty vein and taps it hard, accompanied by a deceptively uncomplicated video in which people and things seem to collide and crash in slow motion...
Here's the same track, remixed by Kids of the Apocalypse...
Haider Ackermann has announced he'll show his first full men's collection (he showed a smaller one in Pitti once) during Paris men's week later this month. It's a solid business decision, given the increased interest in bespoke, and it's excellent news for those of us who felt very comfortable with the prospect of the designer heading up Dior — the talk of the town for a while. It's also sure to produce another front-row sighting of his close friend, Tilda Swinton, decked out in trousers, men's shirting, a tuxedo jacket or other unisexy item. Here's a selection of her greatest men's moments...
Tilda Swinton at Cannes 2013 in Haider Ackermann...
Tilda Swinton at the launch of David Bowie Is in Haider Ackermann...
Carey Mulligan is said to be in the running to play a young Hillary Rodham Clinton, circa 1975, in an upcoming biopic by director James Ponsoldt, of Smashed fame (infamy?). While we do see a resemblance, we'd like to put the kibosh on this idea and vote for one of the other actresses thought to be in consideration. In particular, Scarlett Johansson, who, having hosted numerous fundraisers for Obama in 2012, as well as the Democratic challenger in New York City's mayoral race, would probably bring a level of persuasiveness to the role. She already has Clinton's steely voice down pat.
In the digital age, keeping one's identity a secret is an exercise in futility. Just ask the intensely reclusive Martin Margiela, pics of whom began circulating practically on the day the Internet was born.
And so it is that this pic of Daft Punk is making the rounds. The French electro artists, who are currently enjoying a second week with a number-one album, are noshing on macaroons at their record label, Columbia, reportedly playing a game of champagne pong after an outdoor photo shoot in Times Square with Karlie Kloss (a music video, perhaps?) — with nary a darthy helmet in sight.
The photo, which doesn't appear to be credited, was posted by the band The Knocks (and is by no means the first pic of the duo to emerge). One half of Daft Punk, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, has joked that the reason for their aversion to the spotlight is because "it would not be enjoyable for humanity to see our features." But honestly, next to Karlie Kloss, the same could be said for just about everyone.
Poor Anna Nicole Smith. As if her life and death weren't already fraught with indignities, Lifetime is following up it's spectacularly awful Liz & Dick biopic with a made-for-TV movie based on the hard-partying archetypal blonde. Judging from the wanton trailer, The Anna Nicole Smith Story will be packed with pills, booze, stripping, morning-after makeup, lesbian groping, and yelling at a child. What's worse, her face is painted like a sad clown in one scene. But worst of all? She's played by a relative unknown! There is no greater indignity...
