John Galliano’s reign at Dior was before my time. But he was the first Brit to put his mark on a great French couture house and, in any way you care to look at it, he has been one of the most consequential figures in fashion for the past four decades. Which is why it felt right that the Metropolitan Museum in New York should announce it would be holding a show of his work, and why it felt wrong when they pulled the show earlier this week.
Galliano’s star burned brightly until early 2011, when over the course of two months or so he came apart. There was a damning video of him in a Paris café, hissing at a woman about her “ugly Jewish face” and later telling a man he was a “f-king Asian bastard” he would kill. None of it is defensible, and no one has tried to defend it, least of all the man himself. A Paris court saw to that, convicting him of racist and anti-Semitic abuse and imposing a €6,000 fine ($7,000). Dior let him go, and LVMH made his own namesake label do the same.
A museum is not a moral tribunal. Its function is to put on exhibitions and provide context
He has paid for what he did. Not in some token fashion, but in the media, in court and in his career. After a period of rehab and seclusion to deal with what was seemingly a serious problem with drink and drugs, Galliano made his re-entry. Dana Thomas, the critic, has said he “worked hard to earn the industry’s forgiveness”. He went about it quietly, though, taking on the role of creative director at Maison Margiela. It was hardly a fanfare; the position is designed to keep its holder out of the public eye, much like the founder intended. In a brand built on conceptualism and an aversion to appearances, he found exactly the kind of role that called for him to be unseen.
Then in January 2024 he put on his artisanal show for Margiela and it was something else entirely: a theatrical affair in the manner of Brassaï that drew more than 2.6 million views on YouTube. It is known as one of the decade’s most significant shows.
There had been rumor of a retrospective of Galliano’s work for some time, even though it was risky, given the previous controversy. So when the Met put out word this summer they were going ahead with one, Andrew Bolton, the director, was wise enough to flag the danger, saying the exhibition would weigh artistic merit against ethical accountability. A sensible line for a museum to take: show the gowns but don’t shy away from the man who made them. Or so it should have been. On Monday, however, they pulled the plug on the whole thing.
In not standing by him, the Met has humiliated Galliano. The honor of a retrospective is rare enough for a living designer – only Rei Kawakubo and Yves Saint Laurent have had the distinction before. To award and then withdraw it is a special kind of cruelty.
A museum is not a moral tribunal. Its function is to put on exhibitions and provide context, not to bar the door to anyone with a past transgression. If that were the rule, the walls would be empty. This is not to say Galliano gets a free pass because time has passed; there is a world of difference between canonizing him and an honest appraisal of his work, warts and all. The Met has done neither.
It is worrying to see that an institution of the Met’s standing and resources appears to be so easily swayed by a fortnight of noise. They are retreating from the reality that some of the best art comes from difficult minds. We make no bones about the fact that Coco Chanel was likely a Nazi spy or the vile things Karl Lagerfeld put into words; we discuss them as flawed individuals whose work still matters. Why Bolton cannot seem to act on this principle, if he even understands it, is baffling. One has to question his tenure. He and Anna Wintour are supposed to be the ones dictating the cultural agenda, yet they appear to have no stomach for performative outrage.
The irony is that pop culture, with its appetite for the perverse and for posturing, would have made the show the hit of the season. The controversy was never grounds for cancellation; it was precisely what would have brought the crowds.
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