States of WONDER

A triumph was an haute couture tour de force. Yet, as Hamish Bowles recalls, it's but the latest in the designer's long history of era-defining shows.

- JOHN GALLIANO'S, MAISON MARGIEL

It was a sad, rain-tossed evening seemingly lit by candlelight and stars. When the cab arrived at John Galliano's Maison of the couture for that week-hundreds of kids were waiting and screaming for their own stars. I made my way through the crowds before realizing that I would then have to navigate a series of rain-sodden steps to arrive to the Seine-side building hidden away beneath that magnificent Beaux Arts bridge. I had a stroke a little over a year ago, and I am not as confident with such steps as I once was, but I braved them bit by tentative bit-I had to-and clung on to the handrail for dear life.

The archways of the riverside pont had been cleverly trompe l'oeiled with a subtle 1930s look, revealing a battered and forlorn nightclub with some tables and chairs set outside (during the rainstorm they were protected from the pitter-pat hailing down beyond the bridge).

Inside was a seedy '30s club supported by robust arches of stone, with run-down floorboards leading to arrangements of billiard tables and Thonet chairs. The Galliano gang-at my gathering of tables sat Lila Grace Moss, Tish Weinstock, and the ravishing ballerina Francesca Hayward (I'd just seen her as a heartbreaking Manon Lescaut at the Royal Opera House)-had dressed the part in barely-there vestiges of lace and chiffon or sweeping trench coats. And we waited. And waited. I think an hour had gone by before Francesca, as punctual as any ballet star, wondered: Was it always like this? I, however, was faintly trembling: So much had been put into this scene-setting that I felt the results might be...special.