Mutiny
Six defiant faces launch John Galliano’s debut Margiela fragrance
This morning John Galliano presented his SS19 Maison Margiela collection at the Grand Palais. Preceding the show, six videos played out on big screens announcing Mutiny, the first fragrance released by the house under the creative direction of John Galliano.
Each video featured one of six fragrance representatives – models Teddy Quinlivan, Molly Blair, and Hanne Gaby Odiele, musicians Willow Smith and Princess Nokia and actor Sasha Lane. Each embodying “the values of the fragrance and the defiance of a new world order,” the videos see them express their own personal mantras on defiance, identity and self-love.
“When I was growing up I was always extremely attracted to femininity. I was willing to give up everything for it,” says 23-year-old model Teddy Quinlivan, a voice of support for transgender youths. “Living authentically was more important than having friends. I just stopped giving a shit. Coming out as a trans woman I couldn’t just wait for someone to destigmatise what it means to be transgender… Being who you really are is an act of defiance.” Watch Teddy’s video below.
As for the fragrance concept: “We’d already started with that idea of mutiny, there were things that were happening around me in the world,” explains Galliano in an accompanying podcast about the fragrance. “There was a lot of political unrest in Paris, then the silent women’s march in America, the biggest march in the history of America, I call it silent because I saw it with the sound off, but I just saw the mass. This shot had been taken from above and it was just of their backs, and the power of that march was really moving.
I deconstructed normative values and turned them into a hyper-faceted reconstruction, distilled in a fragrance for the future.”
GALLERY
Crafted with help from legendary French perfumer Dominique Ropion, the scent’s construction mirrors Galliano’s own artisanal décortiqué technique – of reducing a garment to its core structure and redefining its blueprint. Here, the traditionally feminine Tuberose is deconstructed to its core base, flower leather, and then rebuilt in Galliano’s own proportions through three different Tuberose qualities – Tuberose Heart, Absolute Tuberose and MD Tuberose – and the addition of elements such as orange flower and citrus notes.
“In Mutiny, I wanted to allow the tuberose to express all its potential in a very contemporary way, said perfumer Ropion. “It took me six years and over a thousand tries before succeeding. I broke it. I even crushed it. I kept its structure and took out all the rest. Exactly what Mr Galliano does at Maison Margiela.”