The venerable house of Christian Dior is the grande dame of Paris’s smart Avenue Montaigne. With its lofty dimensions and starchy grey-and-white trim, it dwarfs the other designer facades that line the street. But the dowager is kicking up her heels. The place where the New Look was born in 1947 has hired John Galliano, designer extraordinaire, to create all its collections. That’s a little like signing up Noel Gallagher of Oasis to run the Berlin Philharmonic. The former wild-child designer, now shorn of his dreadlocks, has thus transformed himself once again – this time into the svelte head of a Paris couture house that is arguably the most famous brand name in the world – the first Briton to achieve such eminence this century.

The launch of Galliano’s first haute couture collection for Dior happened to coincide rather neatly with the 50^th anniversary of Christian Dior’s original – and at the time scandalous - New Look. But it was down to Galliano to give the house an even newer look. He succeeded – and with flying colours at that. For his debut collection the designer drew on eclectic, odd-ball references, mimicking the hourglass silhouettes of the original New Look – but with hemlines which barely covered the crotch, throwing in colourful African beadwork, inspired by Massy warriors, for good measure. ‘Supremely talented’, the headlines screamed. ‘He is truly a genius – one of the greatest designers of the 20^th century,’ wrote Colin McDowell in The Sunday Times.

Perhaps one of the reasons behind this unparalleled success is because Galliano is the master of atmosphere. Models have run up and down, in gigantic crinolines, pursued by the sound of howling wolves or, during his Nordic woodland phase (all wooden clogs and forest-green boiled wool), thrown real fish into the audience. In doing so Galliano has turned the supermodels into starlets themselves. Who could forget Shalom Harlow as a latter-day sugarplum fairy twirling an arabesque on the balcony of the Champs Elysées theatre, or Nadja Auermann and Linda Evangelista camping it up as born-again Marilyn Monroes in vast prom dresses? A John Galliano show does not therefore take place on a catwalk but a stage. And like any theatrical experience it is demanding. The models are not just walking up and down and back – they are acting. They are in front of the audience – without the respite of going behind the scenes to change. It is, in the widest sense of the word, exposure. In fact theatricality starts long before the show gets underway, as Galliano himself explains:

"We tell the story at the fittings. The whole story, not just the individual girl’s part. The walk. The attitudes. They study the dress. They like direction, but their personalities are really important, so I encourage them to interpret it all in a way that is right for them. What they can’t be is timid. They don’t get a second chance. I tell them, ‘It’s your one outfit, honey. You only get one shot! Go for it! "

It would be a mistake to be lulled into thinking, however, that it’s been all plain sailing for Galliano. Far from it. For if the rise of this 38 year old son of a south London plumber is the stuff of fashion students’ fairy tales, it also contains several passages straight from the pen of the Brothers Grimm. It is a tale of rags, to more rags, to yet more rags, before, finally, riches.

Juan Carlos Antonio Galliano was born in Gibraltar in 1960. When he was six, the family moved to South London. His father, Gibraltarian-born Juan Carlos, taught him to hold a blowtorch; his mother, Spanish-born Anita, taught him flamenco on the kitchen table, and dressed him in extravagant fancy dress. After five unhappy years at grammar school where he was bullied, he went to City and East London College to study design and printed textiles, then to study fashion design at St. Martin’s, where he was a star not only of the workrooms, but also of the Soho clubs that were the social centre of college life. To supplement his income, he worked as a dresser at the National Theatre, which helped to develop his innate theatricality.

Galliano is now seen as more of a creative than a commercial designer. Yet as a student he spent hours in the V&A searching not only for historical inspiration but also for the key to bias-cutting. He also did a work placement with the delightfully named London tailor Tommy Nutter. His former tutor Sheridan Barnett remembers him as a workaholic and it was sheer grind, coupled with technical accomplishment, which made his graduation collection, Les Incroyables, such a triumph. It was a fantastical collection, inspired by French revolutionary costumes, and included inside-out jackets and trailing buttons that, in less accomplished hands, might have appeared like incompetence. They sold out, with Diana Ross among the buyers. Galliano was just 23.

Other successes followed, including, three years later, the prestigious British Designer of the Year award in 1987. And yet the commercial reality was that his clothes were not making any money at all. It is from this period that Galliano’s reputation for self-destructive hedonism springs – and he hit the club scene with a vengeance. By the late Eighties, his lifestyle was becoming increasingly hedonistic, as he sought to escape his frustration at his lack of commercial success.

"I have slept under cutting room tables", Galliano admits, "I have clubbed and, like we all do, I have experimented. I think the press liked to pick up on the wilder side of the way I looked, but it was just a look. The way I dressed was always a reflection of what I was working on at the time. Subconsciously I assimilated the look. Now I have to be more and more careful because more people know that," he giggles. Once viewed as self-destructive, the designer no longer drinks and runs three times a week. In fact he has such a heavy workload – with an average of seven collections a year – that even expeditions to nightclubs have to be carefully ‘timetabled’ in advance.

In fact Galliano is the master of reinventing himself, a man who flamboyantly creates a new self-image as soon as he tires of the old one: from Dickensian street urchin (matted hair and trailing shirt cuffs), to slick Latin gigolo (Armani suits and pomaded hair); albino Rast (waist-length platinum extensions), to gypsy king (see-through shirts and charm bracelets) – anything, in fact, from pirate to punk.

By the end of 1995 Galliano had been in secret negotiations with Bernard Arnault, head of the luxury conglomerate LVMH, who was determined to find a young, publicity-generating talent to revitalise the house. Galliano’s appointment as successor to Hubert de Givenchy came as a considerable shock to the Paris fashion world. Not since Charles Frederick Worth founded his couture house in Paris in 1857 had a Brit had such influence in the upper echelons of fashion. His first show in the January of the following year was a triumph, including extravagant taffeta ballgowns, orange Indian silks burnished with gold, and black wool tuxedo all-in-ones. Tina Turner, seated in the front row, immediately placed an order. But it now appears that the Givenchy job was but a dress rehearsal for the grander house of Dior – although no one expected him to move quite so soon.

You can say what you like about John Galliano – and many people do (after all, he only has to thread a needle to make the headlines) – but you simply cannot deny that he has a genuine passion for his chosen field.

"I just really love what I do. The pressure is on all of us – not just me. When that pressure is so intense it releases this other energy. This explosion of energy. I like finding aesthetic solutions to design challenges. I enjoy the passion, how sensuous the cut can be, the fabric, the colour. Its all joy."

You only have to see Galliano at work to know that these words, gushing though they be, are not contrived or plucked out of the air for the benefit of the press. For as the hours tick away before the launch of his latest collection, Galliano can be observed hard at work. Enthusiastically encouraging his models on their way, it is his finest hour.

"I say to them", he adds, "Who do you really want to work with? Sleep with? He’s out there tonight. Do it for him! Do it for me!’ Sometimes they do it too much, but that’s fun, too, because it shows they’re not afraid. Can you imagine what it’s like for them? How insecure they feel? They shake and tremble. They know the big guns – the top editors, bookers and photographers – are out there. Sometimes they’re standing there with napkins under their arms in case they’re sweating. ‘Oh, I’m going to pass out!’ My job is to keep up their energy: ‘You’re beautiful! Do that shape again! That’s fabulous! Don’t lose it!"

And to Galliano’s impassioned cries of ‘Shape! Shape! Shape!’, the models step out and begin to tell the master’s own enthralling story.

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