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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 burnt 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 (£5,100). Dior let him go, and LVMH made his own namesake label do the same.
The irony is that pop culture would have made the show the hit of the season
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.
