SOME are born to greatness, some achieve it, and others just like wearing the clothes.

So John Galliano emerged at the end of his show for Dior yesterday oiled of chest, bronzed of cheek and dressed as Napoleon. While the fashion industry digested the ramifications of Helmut Lang’s defection from his own label, Galliano paused to admire his own image on the television screens massed at the end of the catwalk in a vast tent in the Bois de Bologne.

You’d have to go a long way to find a better illustration of the difference between the knowing exhibitionism of Galliano and the low-key minimalism of Lang. While Lang barely poked his head from behind the curtain at the end of his shows, Galliano takes the Liberace approach.

“Don’t say I don’t do anything for you girls,” beamed Galliano, embracing Marianne Faithfull. “Look at those pregnancy dresses. Now you can eat what you want.”

He is referring to the cream and gold empire line, “pregnancy” Josephine dresses — and possibly that last time he was criticised for asphyxiating the models in pursuit of a 14 in waist. The Josephine dresses with their draped, bouffant fronts and rose-strewn tricorn hats were lovely, as were the rumpled saffron-coloured silks and Restoration devoré velvets of the “Rembrandt” section.

But it was the first section that stunned. Often accused of indulging in unwearable theatrics, Galliano devoted this part to Andy Warhol’s Factory and in particular Edie Sedgwick, Warhol’s gamine muse. Glorious Sixties classics — tiny shift dresses, mini pea-coats and catsuits — appeared with familiar details reworked on a gigantic scale. It was still historical but it was brilliantly clever, chic and, for Dior, achingly wearable.

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