The theme of next year’s Met Gala has been unveiled as John Galliano: Horizons, a tribute to the scandalous and pioneering fashion designer.
Galliano, 65, catapulted to stardom as a dazzling 1990s wunderkind at Givenchy and Dior, championed by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who also runs the Met Gala.
His career imploded after a December 2010 video captured him hurling drunken antisemitic slurs at two women, declaring ‘I love Hitler’ and adding that their ‘forefathers would be f***ing gassed.’
He was gradually able to navigate a return to the spotlight after his longtime close friend Kate Moss enlisted him to design her wedding dress.
A documentary on his turbulent life, High & Low, was released in 2023, intensifying the renewed public interest in him as a sacred monster of the fashion industry.
Wintour announced Galliano’s Met Gala honor this Friday, insisting that ‘his career isn’t defined by a moment’ and that the ‘darkness in John’s past’ would be addressed by the exhibition accompanying the event, via Vogue.
The Daily Mail has contacted Wintour and Galliano’s representatives for comment.
The theme of next year’s Met Gala has been unveiled as John Galliano: Horizons, a tribute to the scandalous and pioneering fashion designer; Galliano pictured with Kate Moss in 2010
Galliano, 65, catapulted to stardom as a dazzling wunderkind of the 1990s, championed by then-Vogue editor Anna Wintour; Galliano and Wintour pictured in 2010
Galliano is the third living designer to have an entire Met Gala based on his work, after Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Comme des Garcons’ Rei Kawakubo in 2017.
The new exhibition is being assembled by Andrew Bolton, the curator who achieved notoriety for the 2011 Met Gala honoring Galliano’s competitor Alexander McQueen, who had hanged himself the previous year on the eve of his mother’s funeral.
‘There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano,’ said Wintour in her statement announcing next year’s theme.
‘His body of work – at Dior, Givenchy, Margiela, his namesake label and more – combines erudition and creativity, darkness and light, the past, the present, the future all smashing together in a brilliant way,’ she added.
‘He’s a great designer and his career isn’t defined by a moment – something that he will live with for the rest of his life,’ said Wintour. ‘The exhibition won’t shy away from any of the darkness in John’s past. It’s part of what has shaped him. The show will take in the full arc of his career and grapple with all of it.’
Born on Gibraltar and raised in England, Galliano began his career in the 1980s and secured the vigorous support of both Wintour and her adjutant Andre Leon Talley.
The turning point year of his professional life was 1995, when he released his iconic Pin-Up collection and was hired as the chief designer of Givenchy.
His career proceeded from strength to strength as he moved to Dior and plunged into a whirlwind of activity that saw him churn out a staggering 32 shows a year.
Galliano is pictured with Linda Evangelista (left), Naomi Campbell (center) and Gisele Bundchen (second from right) at the end of one of his Dior shows in 2007 in Paris
Galliano is pictured in 2011 arriving at a Paris police station after being accused of making racist remarks to a couple at the cafe La Perle
Galliano began to emerge from exile in 2011 when Kate Moss wore his designs at her wedding to Jamie Hince, where she is pictured with her bridegroom and her daughter Lila
Galliano’s propensity to push the envelope occasionally drew brickbats, such as his tongue-in-cheek Hobo collection in 2000, which pulled inspiration from the interwar Parisian ‘tramp balls’ in which the wealthy dressed as the poor.
Privately, he was grappling with a roaring drinking and pill problem that became the object of such frantic speculation that his boss Bernard Arnault confronted him on the subject to his face, prompting Galliano to tear off his shirt, displaying his chiseled physique, and demand: ‘Does this look like the body of an alcoholic?’
In 2011, his career imploded over a video filmed of him in 2010 at the Paris cafe La Perle in which he slurred insults, possibly in jest, at two women he thought were Jewish while so drunk he was subsequently unable to remember the encounter.
‘I love Hitler,’ he said as the women giggled. ‘People like you will be dead today. Your mothers, your forefathers would be f***ing gassed and f***ing dead.’
‘Do you have a problem?’ one of the women asked him from behind the camera, to which Galliano sneered: ‘With you? You’re ugly.’
As the video went viral, Galliano was engulfed in a wave of public denunciations and was promptly jettisoned from Dior, whereupon he issued an apology for ‘allowing myself to be seen to be behaving in the worst possible light.’
Pouring fuel on the scandal, Galliano was convicted in France of making racist and antisemitic remarks during two separate bibulous outings at La Perle, after which his Legion of Honor was rescinded and he was fired from his own self-named brand.
Galliano, pictured with Wintour and Charlize Theron in New York in 2008, is the third living designer to have an entire Met Gala based on his work
Jewish celebrities associated with Dior were polarized by the Hitler video, with Natalie Portman firmly condemning him while Eva Green sprang to his defense.
‘He is extremely fragile, a very sensitive, creative person with a great sense of humor and he’s always been so kind to me,’ Green told the Guardian.
‘I don’t think he’s antisemitic. I’m Jewish. I don’t think he has anything against the Jews. I think it’s more that he was probably a bit drunk,’ she added, wondering aloud if ‘something might have happened’ with the women filming him to instigate the rant.
As he rapidly became persona non grata in the fashion business, Galliano checked into an Arizona rehab and slunk into a brief exile, from which he began to emerge in July 2011 when Kate Moss had him make her gown for her wedding to Jamie Hince.
‘She dared me to be John Galliano again,’ he gushed to Vogue. ‘I couldn’t pick up a pencil. It’s been my creative rehab. She was very professional and very demanding.’
Recalling the imbroglio over a decade later, Moss argued that ‘John Galliano is not a bad person,’ during her appearance on Desert Island Discs.
‘He had an alcohol problem and people turn. People aren’t themselves when they drink and they say things that they would never say when they were sober.’
Wintour announced Galliano’s Met Gala honor, insisting ‘his career isn’t defined by a moment’ and that the ‘darkness in John’s past’ would be addressed; they are pictured in 2016
In 2013, he found himself in hot water yet again when he surfaced wearing an outfit that attracted claims he had dressed up as a Hasidic Jew.
Galliano’s publicist Liz Rosenberg denied the allegations, maintaining that ‘John has worn big hats and long coats for many, many years’ and that the ‘last thing on John’s mind would be to do anything that would offend the Jewish community.’
His definitive return to the business arrived in 2014 when he was hired as the chief designer for Maison Margiela, a position he retained for a decade.
By 2015, his designs were prominently featured in the exhibition attached to the China-themed Met Gala, also curated by Bolton and spearheaded by Wintour.
‘The creative process is my meditation,’ he said in a documentary about the event, directed by Andrew Rossi and entitled The First Monday in May.
‘Playing with textures and shapes and volumes, that’s something that I love, and because of that I am able to even think about going back into an industry where I’ve become an outcast. That fantasy world that I create is escape for me.’
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