“The devil not only wears Prada; she issues public pardons,” said Johnny Oleksinski in the New York Post. Anna Wintour, the Vogue editorial director and mastermind of the annual Met Gala, glossed over the antisemitism of British fashion designer John Galliano, 65, when she recently anointed him the gala’s 2027 honoree and subject of an accompanying museum retrospective. In 2011, Galliano was fired by Dior after he was captured on video berating patrons of a Paris bar by praising Hitler and saying their ancestors would have been gassed. “Call me old-fashioned, but didn’t ‘I love Hitler’ used to automatically disqualify people from receiving prestigious honors in Manhattan?” Galliano has claimed he was drunk and in the throes of addiction. But there’s “a difference between forgiveness and celebration,” and every star who’ll walk the gala’s red carpet in May will be glorifying this famed bigot at a moment when anti-Jewish violence is rising worldwide. “Haven’t we spent the last six years being lectured about inclusion by the exact same elite attendees of this $100,000-per-person event?”
Knowing that Galliano is radioactive, Wintour convened meetings earlier this year that were “unusual by any measure,” said Vanessa Friedman in The New York Times. She, Galliano, and museum representatives sat down with prominent rabbis and other Jewish leaders, seeking feedback as well as support of the exhibition. Some of those Jewish leaders have since said the show could be useful if it presented Galliano’s story sensitively, but others worried about being used as cover by Wintour, who has championed Galliano for years. Galliano at least can claim to being a changed man. He was accused of two other antisemitic outbursts and was eventually convicted in France on hate-speech charges. He also once got so drunk that he spent four hours naked in a hotel elevator growling at other guests and declaring himself a lion. Galliano eventually entered rehab and was tutored by a British rabbi and the head of the New York–based Anti-Defamation League, both of whom have declared him reformed. With Wintour’s help, Galliano resumed his career, though at less-exalted houses.
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