For Maison Margiela Artisanal’s haute couture Spring/Summer 2019 collection, John Galliano used a podcast to address decadence in art, film, literature — and life. Nowhere is that perceived decadence better expressed than in the insatiable thirst for technology, especially among Gen Z types.

‘’The overstimulation of computer-generated imagery alters reality and degenerates the truth. Chaotic and unsettling, it is a confusion of the senses rooted in an over-satiation that inevitably overspills’’, said the show notes. With that, Galliano presented his haute couture collection against an eye-popping graffitied backdrop that totally dominates the visual presentation of his collection.

The gender fluid bodies “replicated that visually chaotic mural as a print using any number of inventive treatments, from traditional hand-embroideries and feather fronds to state-of-the-art reflective fabrics,", writes Vogue’s Hamish Bowles., describing them as “often combined to create a shimmering effect as though you had looked too hard at the sun and then closed your eyes. With mirror underfoot to fracture and multiply the looks, the effect was even more discombobulating and powerful. “

Galliano confessed that he is “feeling so much energy in the world” and the result is a collection that reinvents the vision of haute couture in 2019.