John Galliano, whose first haute couture collection for the House of Givenchy debuts this month, is Boldini in braids, Sargent in a tutu. He exhilarates as he agitates. Where other fashion designers channel-surf for trends (look for Baywatch this spring). Galliano perhaps the last of the old-fashioned couturiers who do it all—from inspiration on. He is obsessed with images of ladies in flight and plight—fleeing their homelands with only a frilly wrapper clutched to their naked bosoms. Not only do his women succumb to temptation, they bite into it heartily. His creative terrain stretches from Fielding's lusty landscapes to the recherché salons of the Marchesa Casati. And yet. despite their baroque vexations, the creatures of his imagination (is it sex. genius, or rock 'n' roll that spurs him on?) always manage to land on their feet—looking slightly flushed and rosy-cheeked in their astral frocks, but no more so than if they had spent the night dancing at Les Bains.

Galliano's terrain stretches from Fielding's lusty landscapes to the recherché salons of the Marchesa Casati.

The setting for the debut of his own spring 1996 collection was a venerable Parisian theater near the Champs-Élysées. From the moment the curtain rose—revealing the fact that half the audience members were seated on the stage it was clear that Galliano was putting on a performance as bawdy as Hogarth's 18th-century scenes and as lewd as Las Vegas. There was Shalom Harlow, her hair glazed with cellophane, striding across the stage like an elegant ostrich in a white tutu and then flip!— showing her bare bottom. One didn't know whether the assembled fashion pros were watching themselves through the enormous looking glass on the stage, or whether they were watching Kristen McMenamy watch her heaving bosom in a wasp-waisted black gown. There was ravishment in the air; it was a night for Lady Booby's heirs.

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Galliano, who lately has been wearing his dark hair plaited in the noble-savage mode, will strike some as too hopelessly romantic for these straitlaced times. At Givenchy they apparently don't think so. Yet the new collaboration has sparked some wags. The British press has been bleating loudly about Galliano's selling out; it's as if Clarissa Harlowe had married Lovelace and opened a discount emporium. One scribe even V called Galliano and his longtime muse. Lady Harlech. "the Marge and Homer Simpson of haute couture."

There's only one response to that: Lighten up. darling. it's a tutu world.

Not only do John Galliano's women succumb to temptation, they bite into it heartily.