Look 39
2000 {designed, The tramp collection spring-summer 2000}; made 2003
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through the NGV Foundation by Norma and Stuart Leslie, Governors, 2002
© Christian Dior Couture
- Gallery location
- Not on display
About this work
This work was commissioned by the NGV in 2000 from John Galliano’s controversial spring–summer 2000 collection, christened ‘hobo couture’ by the press. With its references to squalor and homelessness, the collection was poorly received. What was not understood was that Galliano was also referencing nineteenth-century rag balls, where French aristocrats dressed up as the poor. Made to look tattered, with raw seams, paint splatters and protruding boning, Look 39 simultaneously deconstructs nineteenth-century corsetry and the historicism of the New Look that it inspired. The look is completed with this extraordinary gestural hat by Stephen Jones, who has been milliner to the house since 1996.
Artwork Details
(b) 123.0 cm (outer circumference) 31.0 cm (height) 58.0 cm (width) (hat)
(c-d) 51.8 × 8.2 × 21.2 cm (each) (boots)
label, right side, printed in grey ink on white cotton: 33381 AH2002 2003 / 100% SOIE
(b) label, inside brim at back, woven in black on white fabric: MADE IN FRANCE / Christian Dior / PARIS
(c) stamped in gold ink on insole: Christian / Dior
embossed in sole: MADE IN ITALY / 38
(d) stamped in gold ink on insole: Christian / Dior
embossed in sole: MADE IN ITALY / 38
Presented through the NGV Foundation by Norma and Stuart Leslie, Governors, 2002
© Christian Dior Couture
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Professor AGL Shaw AO Bequest