In the golden afternoon...

Christian Dior

I was absolutely not planning on having anything to say about the Dior F/W 2010 Haute Couture collection. That's pretty much why I stopped reviewing Dior shows, because I've had nothing to say about them except the same-old same-old; boring, stodgy, out of touch, beneath Galliano's capability. It gets tiring complaining about the same thing. But as it turns out I have something to say this season.

I don't hate it, not at all. In fact, there are things about it I quite like. For starters I like that Galliano took what is an extremely cheesy inspiration (flowers) that could easily have resulted in an equally cheesy collection of fusty Dior rehashes, and threw a bit of a curve ball. The clothes are flowery all right, but any flowers that inspired these clothes were probably seen on one of those neon black light posters with black flocked background, not in a garden. I honestly think that the black light poster comparison is kind of apt, because there is something delightfully tacky and kind of vulgar about this collection. Whereas a lot of Galliano's recent collections, both couture and ready to wear, have seemed like earnest attempts at doing tasteful, elegant clothing, this doesn't seem to be going for that effect at all. It seems like it was meant to be over the top and a little ridiculous. Why else would the model's heads be wrapped in colored cellophane like a floral bouquet? That little styling trick, coupled with the technicolor makeup and cartoony pompadours, was a nice touch that helped keep the collection from feeling stodgy. Same goes for the raffia craft ribbon tied around the waists of jackets and dresses. Overall there was something a little haphazard about things. This collection doesn't seem like it was the result of John and his team studiously poring over the Dior archives and painstakingly trying to recreate their beauty. Instead it looks like it came from the inside. It also looks like it was somewhat fun to create. The clothes may be tacky, or silly, or completely ridiculous, and they may not have that madcap spirit of old, but you can't deny that they have a certain liveliness to them that has been all but missing from the house recently. For me, that's the most exciting aspect of this collection. There's more passion in these 30 dresses than there has been in all the collections of the last two years combined. It also doesn't hurt that all I can think about while looking at this collection are those bitchy singing flowers from Alice in Wonderland.

Don't get me wrong though, this is still a far cry from what Galliano is capable of creating. As pretty as the colors and details may be, the fact is that these clothes are still not particularly contemporary. And I can't help but feel like it's kind of easy to look at flowers as a source of inspiration and just end up creating dresses that are meant to look like flowers. It doesn't take the strongest imagination to put hand painted petals cascading down the side of a dress. But on the plus side the clothes don't look like something Dior himself would ever have designed, so that's a bit of progress right there. Another positive is that for once the bright, borderline garish color palette makes utter sense given the theme of the collection, not to mention that some of the clashes are really quite beautiful and very well done. Even though this collection doesn't exactly erase the memory of the last few years it doesn't leave me wishing I hadn't bothered to look at it, either. That may not sound like much, but believe me, at this point that's high praise for a Dior collection.

all images from Style.com