Designers. Dior+Galliano+Versailles+Cocteau= Blissfully Captivating Couture. Second City Style Fashion Blog

It's funny how designers engage in their own kinds of dialogue. Marc Jacobs was channeling the Last Days of the leisure class at Marienbad then we find the flipside at Galliano's Dior, who channels the surrealist musings of Cocteau and late artistic impulses of Picasso that provide an excellent response to the revelations about class, desire and damnation in the 1961 cinema classic.

But thoughtfulness aside.

For those of you who forget EXACTLY what couture means (i.e. just because it's expensive doesn't make it couture, ahem) I refer you back to my little reminder: Policing Haute Couture.  But after putting aside the technicalities, I was stunned when I saw WWD's scrumptious coverage of John Galliano's show at Versailles. Couples with the 60 year anniversay of the legendary design house Christian Dior and  with the reopening of the famed Hall of Mirrors (lovely irony, no?) it dazzled with a nod towards the masked ball-- Picasso's Harlequins, Cocteau's surrealist masks and exaggerations-- all with a smile and a wink. -- Joanne Molina, Senior Editor

VERSAILLES — John Galliano gave new meaning to the term artsy with a breathtaking Christian Dior fall couture collection inspired by painters, illustrators and photographers. Picasso's harlequins, for instance, sparked this romantic diamond-motif pantsuit, replete with a ruff and sweeping hat. It was shown at Versailles on Monday, where a lavish fete to celebrate the house's 60th anniversary also took place.

John Galliano doesn't cotton to being trumped by another's grandeur — not even the Sun King's. So it was inevitable that, for Christian Dior's double anniversary bash — celebrating the house's 60th birthday and, perhaps even more significant to Galliano, his own 10th year at its artistic helm — he would stage an extraordinary event, one dazzling enough to stand up to its backdrop, Versailles, the very name of which pulses with beauty, opulence and boundless indulgence.

Though royal life at Versailles did not end well, anyone who attended the Dior show on Monday night can attest that, in fashion at least, the exquisite lavishness it stood for is alive and breathtaking. Galliano's Bal des Artistes proved an epic spectacle that riffed on the masked-ball motif, while providing a giddy feast for devotees of anything-goes haute and a big royal "take that" to those who have ever doubted the designer in any way. This was an especially emotional show for Galliano, his first since the sudden death in April of Steven Robinson, head of the Dior and Galliano Studios, to whom the collection was dedicated. "He was friend, family. There's a very big hole," Galliano said the day before his show. "But I have a guiding star up there. I'm feeling him."

The designer more than wowed his thousand guests with every move, including the Surrealist improvements he made to the endless L'Orangerie corridor where he installed his runway — it takes beaucoup moxie du mode to plop Cocteau-esque animalia masks on baroque statuary. There was his musical fusion of string quartet, gospel and flamenco, and a post-show party on the grounds that wisely featured not a sit-down dinner but myriad tents, some with food stations and others, sumptuous seating arrangements done up with plush upholstered faux Louis this-and-that. Most importantly, the clothes were magnificent. No, they weren't for any real-life end use, at least not this side of crazed billionaire weddings or the Met Costume Institute gala; (as with ready-to-wear, the "commercial" collection is back in the atelier). These gems wouldn't even suit a major-release period costume drama; they'd break the most indulgent film budget.