John Galliano: the puppet show

Love Magazine's 10th issue may feature cover stars Cara Delevingne, Edie Campbell and Georgia May Jagger and Minnie herself all wearing mouse ears but Parisian fashion annual, Vestoj has set a new benchmark in the publicity stunt department. To accompany its fourth issue, it has created a 20-minute puppet show adaptation of John Galliano's Charlie Rose interview of earlier this year. SEE: Apologetic John Galliano on the Charlie Rose chat show Star of the show, Little John Talks is Little John himself, a marionette version of former Dior designer John Galliano, as created by puppet-maker Etienne Bideau-Rey. His outfit is based on the Napoleon-style garb Galliano wore to take his bow after his Madame Butterfly haute couture show for Dior in 2007. The play is next due to be performed on December 10 at David Lynch's Silencio nightclub in the French capital but don't worry, it's going on tour and coming to the London College of Fashion on February 4 next year as a precursor to London Fashion Week. READ: John Galliano speaks: "It's the worst thing I have said in my life, but I didn't mean it" The theme of Vestoj's fourth issue is Fashion and Power and the publication features interviews with fashion power players including H&M's Margareta van den Bosch and A.P.C. founder Jean Touitou. As editor-in-chief Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, a senior research fellow at The London College of Fashion (with which the magazine is produced in collaboration) told us, the play itself is a commentary on fashion and power. "What to us was remarkable about the interview Galliano gave on TV (and in Vanity Fair)," she said, "was the level to which it seemed manipulated, controlled, spin-doctored. The whole affair seemed shrouded in smoke and mirrors. Both Galliano and Rose appeared to be acting out some very clearly defined roles, with very little scope for improvisation. Not too dissimilar from a puppet show in fact." READ: John Galliano headed for permanent post at Oscar de la Renta? The set by David Myron is a juxtaposition of a life size puppet theatre and a classical Greek temple. "The play is a metaphor," continued Aronowsky Cronberg, "dreamy, melancholic, slightly surreal but also tongue-in-cheek." "'Those who tell the story, also hold the power,'" she said, citing Plato, who students of the classics may remember faced something of a trial himself with rather worse repercussions than that of Galliano.