The John Galliano Met Gala Was Doomed to Fail

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had announced an exhibition titled John Galliano: Horizons for its 2027 season, with their annual gala to be themed around it. This would have been only the second time that the prestigious Met had given such an honour to a living designer. That is no longer happening. Galliano himself released a statement on Monday, saying, “After much reflection and discussion with the Met and all those involved, I have decided, with great sadness, that it is best for the exhibition not to take place at this time.”

The announcement of the Galliano exhibit had caused immediate controversy. In 2010, he had harassed a couple in a bar in Paris, telling them, “I love Hitler […] People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers would all be f***ing gassed.” Several months later, he hurled antisemitic abuse at a Jewish woman named Geraldine Bloch and made racist comments about her South Asian friend. Video of the Paris incident emerged around this time, and soon Galliano was fired from his position at Christian Dior. Galliano has issued apologies for his abuse. In 2011, he was found guilty of antisemitic abuse and issued a suspended fine of €6,000. He claimed that he was not bigoted but that addictions and work stress had caused him to act out.

For about a year, the fashion world had to pretend that it was punishing Galliano, but by 2013, he was working backstage at Oscar de la Renta. A year later, he was given the prestigious job of creative director of Maison Margiela. The reason he landed those jobs? Anna Wintour. The former Vogue editor was Galliano’s biggest cheerleader. She brokered the deal for his temporary residency at de la Renta, and wore his designs at a time when he was seen by many as persona non grata. Her support of Galliano was viewed as a sign for the rest of fashion to follow suit. Now, Galliano is a regular on red carpets and his pieces are worn by the biggest stars, like Kim Kardashian and Zendaya.

I hope Galliano has changed. He’s gotten clean and sober, and hasn’t been involved in any other drama since then. But the optics of heralding him as a grand icon of fashion with a Met exhibition — and having the event take place on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day) — was always, at best, deeply misguided. The optics were sloppy, and it only served to highlight the bubble of privilege that high fashion remains in, even as profits slump and the realities of a recession hit hard. Anna Wintour, a trustee of the Met and co-chair of the Met Gala, clearly thought she was powerful enough to bypass any pushback. After all, she had the Bezoses at this year’s gala and seemed blissfully ignorant to the image that perpetuated.

The thing about money is that it’s an incredible insulating force that can cloister you from the chatter of the rest of the world. Among her lot, I imagine everyone just wanted to do something nice for their pal John. They helped him to make that comeback by ensuring he faced next to no professional repercussions for an official charge of antisemitism, so why not give him a Met exhibit? It’s the clothes that matter, right? That’s the attitude that the fashion world has used to ignore labour failings, cultural appropriation, body fascism, and crocodile skinning. The Met’s rich donors probably wouldn’t care. It’s not like Jeff and Lauren did.

And yet people did care. They cared that Galliano was so flagrantly abusive and his pals chose saving his job over restorative justice for those he harmed. Even some of Wintour’s rich friends were offended because racism and antisemitism is both corrosive and expensive. Once upon a time, Wintour could have gotten people to fall in line through sheer brute force. The kingmaker of fashion and the queen of Conde Nast had that kind of power. Now? Magazines are dying and Wintour doesn’t run Vogue anymore. Okay, that’s not technically true. Her new job title is global chief content officer and artist director at Condé Nast. The day-to-day magazine duties fall to Chloe Malle, but nobody believes that Wintour is hands-off about Vogue or anything else at the conglomerate. The Met Gala is still her baby too. She would have been the one pushing for a Galliano show, for that big spotlight on the man whose career she saved. Her name is inextricably entwined with that of Galliano in the history books, and that’s by her design.

The image of current-era Wintour is of a figure of the past generation clinging to power, one who is becoming increasingly disconnected from the modern world of fashion, journalism, and celebrity. The Galliano mess is but one example of that, but look at how the lion’s share of coverage of this year’s gala was focused on its “let them eat cake” pandering to the tacky Bezos clan. As Tom and Lorenzo wrote in response to Galliano stepping away from the gala, “This was such an unforced error on Anna Wintour’s part and when her career retrospective is written, this will be seen as one of the moments where her diminished influence became more pronounced.” It was bad for business, bad for fashion, and just a dunderheaded moment of ignorance from a woman who can no longer afford to be above it all.