According to rumors circulating in Paris, British fashion designer John Galliano, who was arrested for a drunken public anti-Semitic speech in the French capital in 2011, was later fired from his prestigious position as creative director of Christian Dior. The eponymous brand could be rehired by its former employer, Bernard Arnault, chairman of luxury group LVMH Moët Hennessey Louis Vuitton and the world’s richest person.
To recap: On separate occasions more than a decade ago, Galliano was reported to have used hate speech against cafe patrons in Paris.
During one arrest, he snarled, “Dirty Jew face, you should be dead” as he pulled a customer’s hair.
At the second explosion, captured on video, Galliano said: “I love Hitler… Your mothers, your ancestors are gassed.” He was eventually found guilty of public insult and given a suspended fine of €6,000.
He claims he doesn’t remember any of it.
Although Galliano has a solid job as creative director at the avant-garde Maison Margiela, a post he’s held for a decade, word among fashion insiders (and as I first reported in my Substack newsletter The Style Files) could be brought back to the LVMH fold. Various alleged scenarios include a recapture of the now nearly dormant John Galliano brand, which he founded in London in the 1980s, sold to LVMH in the 1990s, or an LVMH-owned couture house where Galliano enjoyed great success. It includes the recapture of Givenchy. 1995 and has been without a designer since January 1st. “I heard [he will go] “For Celine,” says Robert Burke, founder of New York retail consultancy Robert Burke and Associates, referring to another LVMH brand that is reportedly about to lose its chief designer Hedi Slimane.
Should Galliano finally be allowed to return from what he describes as “exile”?
“It’s a complicated question,” Kathleen Law, an American tourist from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, said last week while visiting La Galerie Dior, a hugely popular mini-museum at the company’s headquarters in Paris that showcases Galliano’s best works. he thought. couture house debuts. “The same goes for Michael Jackson. Can you separate art from people?”
The rumors (that’s all for now (LVMH declined to comment when contacted for this story)) were not born out of hope from Galliano devotees.
For the past two years, there has been what appears to be a carefully conceived and executed plan to publicly rehabilitate Galliano — most likely led by Arnault and his longtime mentor Anna Wintour, American Vogue’s editor-in-chief and chief content officer. of its parent company, Condé Nast.
Galliano first attended the opening of the “Monet – Mitchell” exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in October 2022 and posed for photos with Wintour, Arnault and former Dior CEO Sidney Toledano. A rapprochement between Galliano and LVMH.
Then in January, Galliano made global headlines for Maison Margiela by staging a spectacular haute couture show under a Paris bridge, featuring models that looked like blow-up sex dolls. Galliano worked on the collection for 18 months (a time luxury he could never afford at a mega maison).
Launchmetrics, fashion’s leading marketing platform and data analytics company, reports that the Margiela show generated a staggering $18.5 million in Media Impact Value (a 90 percent increase for the company), placing it fourth in Haute Couture behind powerhouses Dior and Schiaparelli and Chanel respectively.
in March, High and Low: John GallianoThe feature-length documentary, directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald, spearheaded by Wintour and produced in part by Condé Nast Entertainment, has been released in the US and UK. In it, Macdonald likens Galliano to the fallen French emperor Napoleon I (one of Galliano’s style heroes) and gives the designer an inordinate amount of screen time to directly apologize to the audience for his appalling behavior and explain why he fell into such a dark, numbing state gives. and-booze-infused abyss.
What are the benefits of returning Galliano to fashion’s pantheon? Glory and money. Wintour has supported Galliano since his debut in London in the mid-1980s, and once declared that her favorite show of all time was Galliano’s show in March 1994. Wintour refers to him as a “great designer” and “friend” and no doubt loves organizing defining retrospectives of his work and staging one of her famous Met Gala fundraisers in his honor. Galliano’s colleague Alexander McQueen’s 2011 retrospective, “Savage Beauty,” earned the Metropolitan Museum of Art a minimum of $14.6 million.
Actually, Cut On Friday, it was reported that the Costume Institute plans to devote its 2024 exhibition to Galliano by late last summer, as well as Monday night’s Met Gala. However, the website stated that, according to sources, it has been put on an “indefinite pause.” Instead the museum will open next week Sleeping Beauties: The Reawakening of Fashion, A show that sheds light on works of mastery spanning four centuries.
Such public and cultural recognition would allow Galliano to be seamlessly celebrated in the fashion history books. Arnault could have profitably uncovered Galliano’s archives belonging to LVMH without appearing like a duplicitous profiteer. The luxury industry as a whole could gain a creative boost. As Wintour recently said: “When John’s work goes up, it takes fashion up.”
Galliano’s latest Maison Margiela couture show certainly had the fashion crowd swooning over his dramatic presentation and sexy, if misogynistic, silhouette. But in the nearly 15 years since Galliano became the King of Couture (a position he believed in so strongly, he once posed for a photo sitting on a throne and wearing a crown), fashion has moved in a different direction from the romantic style of dressing deeply rooted in history. and embraced modern concepts such as sustainability, comfort and empowerment. Good on You, a consumer-facing platform that rates fashion brands on their environmental impact, rates Maison Margiela as “very poor.”
Young designers (especially those who graduated from Galliano’s alma mater, Central Saint Martins) are taking sustainability seriously and embracing green practices at every opportunity. Bringing Galliano back to a big LVMH job wouldn’t just mean pushing the notion of “business as usual”; It would be “business as it used to be”, which is as incongruous and unmodern as Margiela’s work.
Beyond that, it should be easy for Galliano to rebuild his reputation, at least in theory. Prada, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and Balenciaga have all recently been canceled or boycotted for racist, misogynistic and, in Balenciaga’s case, sexualization of children, and have largely been forgiven by the fashion community and consumers. in a relatively short time.
But Galliano’s anti-Semitic outbursts appear to have gone even deeper. When he was fired from Dior, managers said they had received complaints from Jewish customers. Actress Natalie Portman, Dior’s perfume ambassador, said: “As a proudly Jewish individual, I will not be associated with Mr Galliano in any way.” For years after the incident, an independent fashion curator tried unsuccessfully to persuade major museums around the world to host the Galliano exhibition. “Most of the board members are Jewish,” the curator explains. “And they say, ‘No.’”
It’s not as if Galliano hasn’t tried to atone. As Macdonald shows in the documentary, Galliano met with Jewish leaders to understand the seriousness of his behavior. He says he’s been sober for 13 years. Dior’s CEO, Sidney Toledano, who is Jewish and fired Galliano, says in the film that he forgives the designer. “People realized that John was repentant and evolving for his earlier sins,” Burke says.
It may not be enough. “His ignominious departure from Dior due to anti-Semitism is a blemish on his track record,” said Luca Solca, Bernstein’s luxury analyst in Geneva. “I really wonder how LVMH will find a way to remove this taint and bring it back. “Despite the years that have passed, this seems difficult.” Especially now, given the rising tensions due to the Israel-Hamas war.
In the documentary, it is clear that Galliano regrets making racist and anti-Semitic statements. But Variety film critic David Rooney wrote in his review that viewers of the film “may not be convinced that he’s remorseful enough.”
As a result, Rooney argues, “the subject is defined by self-pitying martyrdom rather than humble contrition.”
In fact, not all fashion followers believe Galliano, 63, deserves a corporate-backed career reboot. “He’s an incredible designer,” says British Jewish fashion designer Deborah Lyons. “But to bring it back to the surface is narrow-minded self-indulgence. Why do we have to give new life to John Galliano and Kanye West? (West was also excommunicated by the fashion world following anti-Semitic outrage in 2022.) “Everyone is stuck with the voices of the past. This is nostalgia. Of course, now we’re ready for the next thing. “It’s not about putting racists back on the platform.”
Will LVMH ignore the backlash and move on? Historically, with such loud rumors floating around about the band, there is truth in what they say. I sometimes wonder if administrators placed these as a way to gauge public reaction; A deluxe version of an old-school political game. What is certain is that if Galliano is rehired by LVMH, the move will confirm the conclusion I reached in my biography about McQueen and Galliano, Gods and Kings. In the age of globalization, luxury fashion is, after all, just a business.