Tangier is a city as ancient as the gods, the point where Europe and Africa meet, where the Atlantic and the Mediterranean kiss. It is a labyrinth of narrow streets "thronged with the phantoms of forgotten ages," Mark Twain wrote in 1869, and "a basin that holds you," Truman Capote observed, where "the days slide by less noticed than foam in a waterfall."   In the early 1960s, a young boy from Gibraltar named John Charles Galliano passed through Tangier by ferry with his Spanish mother, Anita, on his way to and from school in Spain--an exotic commute made necessary by a long-standing diplomatic feud between his father''s homeland and his mother''s. Galliano delighted in their stopovers in this strange, curious place. "The souks, the markets, woven fabrics, the carpets, the smells, the herbs, the Mediterranean color," he reflected years later. This, he mused, was "where my love of textiles comes from."   Galliano was born on November 28, 1960, the middle child of three; sister Rose Marie was five years older, and Maria Inmaculada, three years younger. His father, John Joseph, was a plumber who "came from a long line of rather serious and practical men, such as tailors and carpenters, all of whom traditionally began to earn a living from the age of fourteen," he said.

  His mother, Ana Guilln Rueda--known as Anita--hailed from La Lnea de la Concepcin, the Spanish town across the border from Gibraltar. The Guilln family had long lived in the rural farming region next to the British territory. "They were renowned for their passion for flamenco and a temperament that was utterly fiery and wild," Galliano said. She grew up under Spanish dictator General Franco''s totalitarian regime--a pro-nationalist and ultra-Catholic society where anti-Semitism flourished. After she married and moved to Gibraltar, she maintained close ties to her homeland, and made sure her young son was educated in the same culture as she had been.   The Galliano family resided at 13, Serfaty''s Passage, a small lane named for the local Jewish population, where the Esnoga Grande, Gibraltar''s principal synagogue, has been located since the early eighteenth century. Gibraltar has had an uneasy relationship with the Jewish community for centuries. Following their expulsion from Spain in 1492, much of the Spanish Jewish diaspora--known as the Sephardim, after the Hebrew word for Spain--passed through Gibraltar on their way to settlements in North Africa.

They were given the right to a permanent settlement in 1749 and the population flourished quietly until World War II, when all its residents were evacuated from the two-and-a-half-square-mile territory.   The Gallianos were devout Catholics who attended mass regularly. Galliano was baptized at the Cathedral of St. Mary the Crowned, the baroque seat of the Roman Catholic diocese of Gibraltar, before the same altar where his parents wed. He adored growing up in Gibraltar, mesmerized, he said, by the "bright alleyways, sunshine, blue skies and a main street bustling with sailors."   But John Joseph wanted more for his children: in 1967, he moved the family to South London, so six-year-old Galliano and his sisters could receive a better education. Galliano remembered thinking how brave his mother was "to depart with three young children to a completely foreign country where she did not speak a word of the language." They eventually settled in the middle-class neighborhood of Peckham, where they lived in a tan brick Victorian row house at 128, Underhill Road.

  London was in the throes of the Swinging Sixties, when the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and other British Invasion bands were topping the pop music charts; fashion designer Mary Quant was liberating women with the miniskirt and hot pants; film directors Tony Richardson and Richard Lester were turning out cool, ironic comedies like  The Knack . . . and How to Get It ; and photographers David Bailey, Terence Donovan, and Harry Benson were capturing it all for  Harper''s Bazaar ,  Vogue , and  Life . "In a decade dominated by youth,"  Time  magazine pronounced in its landmark cover story on the city''s cultural renaissance, "London has burst into bloom. It swings; it is the scene."   The Galliano family wanted no part of that London. Instead Anita, a striking redhead with an olive complexion and a good figure, did what she could to keep the scents, the colors, and the music of southern Spain alive in cold, gray, rainy England.

She cooked traditional Mediterranean meals and encouraged her young son to sing--he had a lovely, pitch-perfect voice--and to dance the flamenco. "On tabletops," he later explained, because "it makes more noise."   "I knew pretty soon that I had inherited this whole Spanish pride thing from my mother--the way you look and the way you walk and dress," he admitted. "I never knew anyone with more outfits than her. She was the sort of woman who would dress herself and her children up to the nines and scrub us all with baby perfume until we sparkled just to go out down the road for a coffee. I can still remember all the heads turning as she walked by."   John Joseph--a fairly short and stocky, fair-skinned, balding man--ran his own plumbing business, and taught his son some of the basics, like how to use a blowtorch. "I would sometimes go out with him on jobs and I was struck by how he always had to have the most perfect finish and the cleanest joint, and how sad it was that all that craftsmanship would never be appreciated," Galliano said.

His father''s profession--which was very low on the English class scale--eventually became a sore spot for him: "People are always talking about how I am a plumber''s son," he complained. "I am my father''s son primarily. What he chose to do as a career was his choice and he did it very, very well." Galliano''s mother worked as "dinner lady" in a local school cafeteria. He never made mention of it publicly.   Throughout the home there were souvenirs of their pre-London life, such as a Spanish fan and pictures of Gibraltar. Galliano spoke Spanish with his mother and English with his father. "Other boys'' houses always seemed to smell of dogs and musty carpets," he said, "whereas ours smelt of garlic and clean laundry and fresh flowers.

"   As in Gibraltar, the Galliano family attended mass regularly. On some Sundays, Galliano would serve as an altar boy at the 9:30 service and play guitar for the Latin mass. He was particularly captivated by "all the pomp and ceremony, the clouds of incense, the Holy Communion outfits," he recalled--an infatuation that would later surface in his fashion shows. For his first communion, he said, "I arrived in this dazzling white suit, bedecked with rosary beads and gold chains and ribbons with all the saints on." The other boys were in their conservative school uniforms. "I knew I was different," he admitted, "and I ended up being photographed with all the girls. But it didn''t bother me. I always liked being with the girls, and I also liked looking cool.

"   Galliano readily allows that his parents instilled a strong set of values, "like the need for discipline and honesty, the notion that things were only worth doing if you did them to the best of your ability, and the importance of a deep religious faith," he said.   Later in life, however, Galliano disclosed that underneath the appealing veneer, there lurked unspoken darkness and fear. His father "was pretty strict and I was always afraid of him," he said. "If I went a little bit too off-- slap!  It was Dad''s upbringing and it was Victorian, and that''s the way he was." One time, when he found his father''s authority too suffocating, he said, "I flew into a rage [and] took the guitar I had been practicing on and smashed it down the stairs, just missing my father''s head. Everyone looked utterly horrified, and . . .

I can remember the sick feeling I had, until I could finally go to confession and get rid of all the badness that I felt."    * * *    GALLIANO WAS A GOOD STUDENT and passed the entrance exams for Wilson''s Grammar School, a state-run boys'' middle and high school. Back then, grammar schools were a cross between private school and public school: students wore uniforms and the education was a rigorous, advanced curriculum, but the tuition was state-funded. Students came from all backgrounds, particularly what one Wilson''s alum described as "hardcore middle-class families who pushed their kids to do well on the exams." For the less privileged, such as Galliano, attending grammar school was a ticket to a better life.   He quickly discovered "what the whole place was going to be about," he said. "The first-year pupils were bullied by the sixth-formers; they would do it very slyly, like suddenly winding you with a blow to the stomach, which would leave you gasping, on the way to assembly, while the teachers would more or less turn a blind eye." Eventually, he made a small circle of friends and participated in creative school activities, such as theater.

  Small and thin with a dark Mediterranean complexion, he had little in common with the other boys in such a heavily Protestant culture--a gypsy-looking imp in the midst of a clan of freckle-faced roughhousers. He wasn''t much of an athlete--he only excelled at tennis, a sport he''d keep up in adulthood. He wasn''t too masculine either, opting to sass up his conservative uniform with mod shoes and cut his hair in a stylish wedge. "John stood out and was camp," says a former schoolmate. "He definit.