The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s John Galliano plans imploded over the weekend.
On Friday, my colleagues Vanessa Friedman and Jacob Bernstein dug into the intensifying backlash over the Met’s plans for an upcoming retrospective to honor Galliano, a consensus fashion genius whose legacy was forever altered by the antisemitic comments he made in 2011. In the month since we broke the news of the exhibition, donors, collectors and city officials — many of them Jewish, some of them unlikely to identify a Galliano Dior dress from a Givenchy one — had been urging the museum to reconsider. The uproar escalated as the Mamdani administration and local politicians added to the criticism.
It all collapsed on Monday. Galliano announced on Instagram that he would be bowing out. The Met said it would announce a new exhibit “at a later date.” Anna Wintour, the Met trustee and Condé Nast honcho, stood by the designer, whom she’s championed over the last several years: “John’s decision that the exhibition devoted to his work should not take place at this time is very courageous and a measure of the man he is,” she said in a statement.
Galliano may be able to shrug off this monthlong debacle most easily. He still has a Zara collaboration set to debut this month, and he can otherwise ebb back to his relatively reclusive life. The Met will have to do some work to mend its relationship with donors and plot for a new exhibit — but it remains the Met.
Wintour, though, faces fresh questions about why she was willing to take such a gamble on a polarizing figure like Galliano. After assiduously managing her all-powerful image over the years, she’s now at the end of a highly public reversal, exposing the limits of her influence. There are likely to be more twists and turns to come. In the meantime, read all of Vanessa and Jacob’s robust reporting on the Met’s initial announcement and its latest move.
The Best Anti-Style Tennis Style
We’re three days into the U.S. Open, and already we have been given a bevy of fashion choices worth debating: Carlos Alcaraz’s nip-slipping tank, Naomi Osaka’s newspaper gown, Novak Djokovic’s Darth Vader-black polo. Allow me to submit one more player to watch closely. A player who frankly, would never make a conventional best-dressed list: Adrian Mannarino.
Mannarino, 38, bald and ranked No. 67, is a grinder in baggy blush pink shorts. He won his first match in five tight sets, wearing a loosefitting white T-shirt from Celio, a mass French retailer (his sponsor) and Nike sneakers (not his sponsor). He wears no hat or raffish headband. His clothes have barely a thumbprint of a logo.
On the court, Mannarino doesn’t look otherworldly, or celeb-ified. His outfit isn’t some calculated component in a multinational company’s marketing plan. (His most mismatched “who cares?” look, though, may be one he wore years ago, of renown to tennis nerds: a Nike shirt, Adidas shorts and Lacoste socks.)
Mannarino’s Open outfit is a reminder that despite tennis’s cultural inflation, it’s still an approachable sport. A sport that anyone in a shirt and sneakers can rock up and play. Or try to. Watching Mannarino on the court in a baggy tee and sale-rack sneakers is like looking at a Picasso painting and getting that “well, I could do that” inkling. I never could. But it’s nice to dream.
Other things worth knowing about:
-
The designer Ib Kamara has left Off-White, the brand he was tapped to lead just months after the death of its founder, Virgil Abloh, in 2021. In spite of Kamara’s best efforts (and a few collections that, at a different time — and maybe under a different name free of the Off-White baggage — would’ve made an impact) he was unable to recreate Abloh’s singular spark.
-
The Faith No More guitarist makes wordless book review vlogs now. (His favorite books get little kisses.)
-
An accessories brand for those who were captivated by the hair comb styling by the Row for spring/summer 2026.
-
“Unzipped,” the best movie about fashion (not up for debate, sorry), is returning to theaters.
-
A lot of people last week were making a big deal out of Christy Turlington’s appearance in the new Armani campaign. Ah, the ’90s! They were back! But wait: Flip through the September issue of Vogue and you’ll find the supermodel in a very different ad. This one for Calia, an activewear brand sold at Dick’s Sporting Goods. The high and low of contemporary fashion, captured in one model’s C.V.
-
Consider Diane von Furstenberg’s innovations in sun-blocking technology.
-
This soft, painterly Olivia Rodrigo cover for Vogue Philippines by the photographer Szilveszter Makó.
What we’re reading:
-
Maureen Dowd on Galliano’s early, sort-of-forgotten controversy: when he made a collection inspired by homeless people.
-
Remembering a man who denim nerds revered.
-
Rachel Hodin’s sleuthing for her Substack Wear Mail — involving diving into the stacks of old fashion magazines, dissecting images and parsing profiles from decades ago — is bar none for anyone who prizes arcane details like that Phoebe Philo’s home in 2005 included a neon sign that read “CLUTCH.”
-
“It’s one parking space, Michael. What could it cost, $250,000?”
“Looks like cosplay, rock-climbing footwear for the elite. I will take a pass.”
— A reader on last week’s newsletter about the onslaught of approach shoes hitting the market
Look of the Week
The post A Mess at the Met appeared first on New York Times.
