While still a young person growing up in northern England within the ’90s, Alexander Fury would save up and buy fashions by John Galliano.
He hasn’t stopped, crediting the “fantasy of Galliano’s work” for making him wish to work in fashion in the primary place — and likewise driving him to amass a set already numbering nearly 200 pieces by the British design maverick.
The crème de la crème of that collecting spree is to go on display on Tuesday during Paris Couture Week in an exhibition hosted by French luxury resale site Re-See at its private salon. Included amongst the just about 40 items are various styles from Galliano’s landmark fall 1994 show, done on a shoestring and paraded within the empty Seventeenth-century Paris mansion of art and fashion patron São Schlumberger.
“I’m lucky that I actually have about nine outfits from that show. What I like about those is the inherent invention born of necessity — the identical color, the identical fabrics, reused and repurposed, the jackets proposed upside-down to rework the silhouettes,” Fury said. “There’s a simplicity to their complexity, which I believe is a mark of true genius.”
Currently menswear critic at The Financial Times newspaper, and fashion features editor at One other Magazine, Fury can also be planning to part with a select variety of pieces on Re-see.com as he “hones down” his stash to the “fundamental Galliano collections that actually shaped me.”
Amongst them is a version of the houndstooth suit wasp-waisted Canadian model Yasmeen Ghauri rocked in Galliano’s spring 1995 show, and a number of bias-cut dresses, one with an intarsia flower. “I like the concept I may give these dresses one other life,” he said.
That is the second time Re-See has called on Fury and spotlighted his fashion archive.
In line with Re-See cofounders Sofia Bernardin and Sabrina Marshall, such exhibitions are targeted at fashion-forward clients who want to deepen their knowledge of fashion history and design.
“We’ve got seen an enormous increase in interest around Galliano pieces,” Marshall said. “The ’90s and logo-mania craze of recent years definitely ushered in a latest, younger generation of collectors, while at the identical time reawakening the magic of Galliano’s work to generations who lived through these legendary moments.”
While the quantity of transactions is small in comparison with competitors like Vestiaire Collective or The RealReal, Re-See’s average basket is higher than the industry average: it rose to slightly below 1,500 euros in the primary half of 2023.
Fury had mixed feelings about steep inflation around vintage Galliano.
“It’s incredible and exciting to see the record prices for pieces at auctions — albeit barely frustrating as someone who’s attempting to purchase these pieces,” he allowed. “To say the secondary marketplace for Galliano through vintage dealers is frenzied is a large understatement, although I do find it a touch distasteful once you see certain unscrupulous dealers snapping up Galliano on platforms like Vestiaire and The RealReal after which selling it on other platforms for 10 times [that] — sometimes much more.”
The Re-See exhibition focuses on Galliano collections from 1992 to 2002, a fashion decade attracting enormous interest from designers and consumers alike.
“If you take a look at talents like Galliano or [Lee Alexander] McQueen, their work within the Nineties was all about creative expression, without commerce being considered,” Fury mused. “Today, a young designer is never afforded that freedom.”
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