This really made me realize the problem with Dior, Couture especially. For the past two years or so, John has been designing cliche couture collections...he's been designing grand ball gowns and it's all been very vintage couture.
It's frustrating because his couture collections from this period (2000) to about 2005 were really anything but 'cliche' couture collections. Collections like this one, inspired by homeless people, collections inspired by fetishes, nightmares and dysfunctional families, collections inspired by Edie Sedgwick, collections inspired by Marilyn Monroe and ancient Aztecs...now it's all inspired by vintage Dior, Avedon and Penn, old Hollywood glamour, blah, blah, blah. He's stopped taking inspiration from the world and the street and now he's only been inspired by vintage Dior couture...which means it's old, stale, irrelevant, and cliche.
In my opinion, Riccardo Tisci and JPG have taken John's place as the irreverant, truly modern Couture designers...instead of making ridiculous, old school ballgowns, Tisci will design a couture bomber jacket, a couture pea coat...JPG, instead of designing vintage ballgowns, will instead design a couture trench, a couture pantsuit, a couture sweater...that all so much more modern and relevant than any debutante ballgown.
John used to be the kind of guy who would design a couture leotard, a couture coat splattered with bleach, a couture track suit, a couture biker jacket...now Dior couture is beginning to look like a 'ladies who lunch' label who wear nothing but smart skirt suits and ballgowns to their galas.