John Galliano, who on Monday withdrew from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s show against a swelling chorus of criticism from local politicians, trustees and donors, is not leaving the spotlight any time soon.
The designer, who has never entirely shaken off antisemitic comments he made over a decade ago, still has a long-gestating partnership with Zara, the fast-fashion retailer, set to debut this month. This comes after Galliano spent a decade as the creative director of Margiela, where he created some of the most critically acclaimed work of his career. He left that label in late 2024.
In truth, fashion has never forsaken Galliano. Clothes from Dior collections are as coveted as ever on the resale market, and as recently as 2021, he was walking the red carpet at the British Fashion Awards. Kim Kardashian and Zendaya wore Galliano dresses to the 2024 Met Gala. Critics and collectors continue to hold him up as the rare creative director who reigned over fashion in the 1990s and continues to charm Instagram-age fashion obsessives today.
This week, many prominent members of the fashion ecosystem — including Alessandro Michele of Valentino, Marc Jacobs and the model Anja Rubik — made public offerings of support on Galliano’s Instagram account and on the Vogue Instagram post about the show.
Some, on social media in particular, are interpreting the exhibition’s implosion as a form of cancel culture. But in truth, Galliano was never canceled — at least not by the community that knew him best.
A brief break with success
Galliano was fired from Dior in 2011, where he had been creative director for 15 years, after his conviction of a hate crime in a French court and the surfacing of antisemitic comments he made, but his time in the wilderness was brief. Immediately he found apologists in the fashion world, ready to see past, or explain away, his behavior. “It makes me terribly worried for him,” Daphne Guinness, a British socialite, told The New York Times in 2011. “He has had a couple of tough years.”
Galliano’s pathway to possible rehabilitation was paved by his allies in the industry, most of all Anna Wintour. Just two years after his drunken rant, Wintour and Jonathan Newhouse, the chairman of Condé Nast International, had approached Jewish leaders on Galliano’s behalf.
That year, Galliano tiptoed back into the design studio, taking up a temporary residency at Oscar de la Renta in New York. Wintour had helped him secure the post.
From Oscar de la Renta, Galliano leaped to a full-time position as creative director of Maison Martin Margiela the next year and spent the next decade working for the brand. Coverage of those collections often included mention of his antisemitic outburst, but over the years, a consensus emerged in the fashion world that he was troubled, sure, but his work still simmered with genius.
He crystallized that idea with his final “artisanal” show at Margiela in January 2024. Staged under the Pont Alexandre III bridge in Paris, the collection was theatrical and form-busting, showcasing models in extreme corsets and skin embellished to appear like porcelain. A video of the show has more than 2.6 million views on YouTube.
Then came “High & Low: John Galliano,” a documentary produced in association with Condé Nast Entertainment, a few months later. The documentary afforded Galliano a platform to explain in full his side of his antisemitic tirade.
It also, though, took viewers back to the dazzling, convention-challenging work that he whipped up during his early years at Givenchy and Dior. In a sense, the documentary reminded viewers why fashion fell in love with him to begin with. Aiding this effort, a chorus of talking heads — supermodels (Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell), actors (Charlize Theron and Penélope Cruz) and Wintour among them — spoke glowingly of the designer.
While Galliano appears contrite, certain critics argued that the film didn’t sufficiently grapple with the pain his words had caused. In light of the Met debacle, that criticism now feels like a warning.
It had been Wintour’s longtime desire to secure a Met retrospective for Galliano, who would have been just the third living designer to receive such an honor. On Monday, Wintour continued to praise him. In a statement published on Vogue.com, she described Galliano’s decision as “very courageous and a measure of the man he is.”
Wintour’s careful words that the exhibition “should not happen at this time” seemed to leave the door cracked for the concept to be revisited in the future.
But while the fashion community’s backing may help Zara sell its Galliano collaboration or boost views of his fashion shows, it has not insulated him from scrutiny from the wider world — from those who didn’t see his uncompromising creativity as reason enough to overlook his transgressions.
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