Rendez-vous Galant

When I was 19, I came to Paris for my Erasmus year. You know how Erasmus is: you find yourself with lots of spare time, hardly any classes in your schedule and even less classes worth going to. So I decided to do something useful with my time, and, since I was in the capital of haute couture, why not try fashion. Lovely Lydia Kamitsis said she thought I would like to do an internship for a young but very promising Italian designer: Maurizio Galante. I ended up doing 7 months of internship for him. But something else happened. I ended up working in fashion because of him.

Maurizio was my first real contact with fashion. I had heard people in fashion were cruel, superficial and self-absorbed, and I found out Maurizio was sensitive, cultivated, gentle and, above all, gifted. You just have to see his work to realise that: there is such a delicate concept of femininity, almost fragile, but so strong and unique. Layers of beautiful organzas and duchess satins shape up in a sort of futuristic fairytale, a beautiful and poetic hommage to women.

When, in August of that year, I left Paris, I thought if there were people like that in fashion it was worth working in that industry. And here I am, several years later.

And now Maurizio is one of the very few members of the Haute Couture board. Right next to Chanel, Dior and Gaultier. He owes that only to his talent and his hard work. And during the last couture week, which revealed big weaknesses in many designers, he presented the most beautiful of shows (in which opera singer June Anderson changed clothes as she sang live), different, elegant, fun, unpretentious and fantastic. Pure Maurizio Galante.