The designer was fired from Dior in 2011 after he was filmed going on an antisemitic rant at a Paris bar
In an unexpected decision, next year’s Met Gala will be devoted to the works of the equally celebrated and controversial fashion designer, John Galliano.
The British designer, who held the head design position at French heritage brand Dior from 1996 to 2011, was revealed last week to be the theme of fashion’s biggest night next May — an honor that only two other living designers have had in the Met Gala’s 78-year history.
The announcement is somewhat surprising given that Galliano was effectively forced into a nearly three-year professional hiatus after he went on a lengthy, explicit-filled antisemitic rant at a bar in Paris in 2011. He was fired from Dior and ultimately convicted of a hate crime in a French court. (Galliano returned to the fashion world in 2013 with a brief residency at Oscar de la Renta before Maison Margiela named him creative director in 2014.)
Aware of the controversy that such a celebratory decision might bring, longtime Galliano champion and Vogue’s former editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and the Met’s Costume Institute’s head curator Andrew Bolton held meetings with Jewish leaders and rabbis in the months leading up to the announcement, The New York Times reported. In the end, they seemed to earn their approval.
The Anti-Defamation League told the Times in an email that the organization believed that Galliano “genuinely worked through the issues that led to his antisemitic outburst years ago in Paris and we have long since accepted his apology. His efforts to repair the damage his words caused and to learn from that incident should be applauded.” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in North America, also told the Times that he found Galliano to be sincere and “open” in his conversations regarding his past.
Titled John Galliano: Horizons, the Met praised the 65-year-old as one of the “most inventive and influential designers of the past four decades.” Rather than shy away from Galliano’s controversies, the exhibition will directly address the “rupture caused by his antisemitic, racist, and anti-Asian conduct,” according to a press release from the museum. “In doing so, the exhibition will consider how artistic achievement should be understood alongside ethical accountability.”
Galliano is largely credited for reviving the Dior heritage brand, and his designs have earned him a cult following, with auctions of his imaginative pieces regularly selling over $100,000.
