Why was I the only fashionista at the Galliano trial?
Perhaps all those mwah mwahing supporters and 'friends' of John Galliano, who went on trial here in Paris today for allegedly making anti-semitic and racist remarks, failed to receive their stiff invitation, or the bowl of tea roses, or the handbag, which is always what lured us to a Dior show.
I couldn't help but notice the hard bench inside the Palais de Justice was devoid of a lovely stiff carrier bag full of perfume tucked discreetly underneath. There were no well-oiled, lantern-jawed waiters offering flutes of champagne and Laduree macaroons.
Ah, so, it wasn't a fashion show after all, but John Galliano was still about to face his fiercest critics, and with no Anna Wintour in the front row to cheer him on. Ah well. How soon they forget.
When I last talked to John Galliano, in his atelier above the Dior showroom, he told me: 'I have a chart for the whole year,' he said in a South London accent undimmed by more than a decade in Paris (at the trial, he was accompanied by a translator, so has obviously still not managed to learn French).
'And the days are coloured in according to how stressful my work is. Light grey, mid-grey, dark grey and, finally, black.’
A black day is one where the designer can barely get out of bed, so deep is his depression.
I imagine June 22nd was coloured in as a very black day indeed. His defence against the charges was an addiction to alcohol, Valium and sleeping tablets, which meant he had no recollection of the brawl in a Paris Cafe.
He became an addict, he whispered to the court, due to the pressures of looking after his two children: Dior and his eponymous label, John Galliano. He is now unemployed and, apparently, perilously short of money.
I have some sympathy for the designer, but wonder how true it was that he was so overworked he needed the crutch of drugs and alcohol to cope.
I interviewed a young couturier in Paris who used to work for Dior, and he told me that Galliano was barely there, and not remotely hands on. My feeling is that the bubble that is fashion, a Diptyque-scented world where the needs of real women are seen as a joke, changed this formerly sweet man into a monster.
His behaviour is the tip of the iceberg in the world of fashion. I know a very famous photographer who summons only models who do not have a boyfriend to his hotel room for those all-important castings.
I've been on numerous photo shoots where cocaine would be laid out, along with the cans of Diet Coke, and plates of cigarettes.
And this is not the first time I have experienced the rise of Nazism in fashion. The late stylist Isabella Blow once used a brooch in the shape of a Swastika for a magazine cover shoot. Nobody noticed until the picture was published. She thought it was hilarious, that she was being ironic. Everything is funny to people at the top of the fashion tree: the use of exotic skins, and fur, and the outrageous price tags.
I once saw a designer, a HUGELY famous designer, shove his models roughly out onto the catwalk. I saw another grab the butt of model Angela Lindvall, telling her that her hips were too big. It is a harsh, unforgiving, competitive world where ignorance is celebrated, as long as you fit the right tiny mould.
John Galliano will not be given his verdict until the autumn. In the meantime, he returns to rehab as an outpatient.
He said today he is, 'Much better.' Even one of the lawyers in court said he had changed his opinion of the designer, that he seems a 'lost soul'.
His defence lawyer said that John would not have known what he was saying in that cafe. That he would have been 'hallucinating'.
My opinion is that all that happened was he was just found out. Rudeness, callousness and bullying behaviour flourish in this business.
The job of fashion is to make the world a more beautiful place. That is all. At the moment, it is making us all look very ugly indeed...
