Focus on: Galliano's Diorific Spring 07 Collection

You wander into a dimly lit Parisian antique shop. In a dusty back hallway, a rich red runner leads you to a dark, high-ceilinged room lined with bookcases. The shelves are filled with ancient leather-bound volumes and folios neatly tied with age-worn ribbons. A few gorgeous overstuffed chairs and pouffes are scattered around the chandeliered chamber.

You run your fingers along the buttery spines, breathing in the scents held by old paper: vanilla, cinnamon, smoke, roses. As you scan the shelves, one tall folio catches your eye. Its delicate jade-green cover is bound in deep cerise grosgrain...your hand moves forward of its own volition. Gently, you pull it from the shelf and gasp. You've found an original collection of Christian Dior sketches--designed for his first show in 1947.

Quietly, reverently, you move to one of the beautiful chairs, tucking your legs neatly under yourself as you explore your treasure.

"I have designed flower women"
This image bloomed in my mind as I explored Galliano's spring 2007 Dior collection on style.com. I feel he has captured the amazing tinkerbell muse that drove that first Dior collection so long ago, but has set her free to spawn something entirely original. Here is newage as art.

Dior is known to have described his New Look collection as a garden of "flower women." What Galliano has done is lift some of Dior's original designs from the sketch page, fully realizing them as life-sized, walking, breathing artworks. Nothing has been lost in the translation--but so much has been added. Moreover, some of this stuff is actually wearable (!). Here are the loveliest of the lady-blooms, in all their geisha-blossom glory. Enjoy! (Click on thumbnails to enlarge.)