John Galliano, unquestionably one of the greatest designers of his generation, is the subject of a new highly anticipated documentary from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Kevin McDonald. It’s titled High and Low because as well as the heady heights the legendary innovator achieved ….. 4-time winner of UK Fashion Designer of The Year …..it also covers a significant low when in a drunken stupor in a Paris Bar he used anti-Semitic slurs which got him fired from his job as Creative Director of Dior.
After two years in isolation, the industry finally started to forgive him and after a stint at Oscar De La Renta, Galliano eventually became creative director at Maison Margiela where he remains today.
For this film, Galliano met McDonald on a one-to-one basis and literally bared all. Not just about the incident that got him fired but also about the great pressure to ‘deliver;’ at Dior that led to his alcohol and pill addiction. For his part, Mcdinlad includes commentary from fashion heavyweights like Anna Wintour and Edward Enninful who comment on his work whilst Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Penelope Cruz, Bernard Arnault, and Charlize Theron speak to Galliano’s character.
When the film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival the response was heated ….. as we are sure it will be when it arrives in theatres across the US and UK on March 8. Queerguru will be there because despite all that went down, he is undoubtedly a design genius, and there is not many of them around nowadays