Anna Wintour Consulted With Jewish Leaders About Met Gala Honoree John Galliano’s Antisemitic Comments
by Shiryn Ghermezian
British designer John Galliano appears at the end of his Spring/Summer 2011 women’s collection during Paris Fashion Week in this October 1, 2010 file photo. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
Vogue’s global editorial director and Met trustee Anna Wintour met with Jewish leaders in New York City to discuss issues that might arise by honoring British designer John Galliano at the Met Gala next year in light of his 2011 antisemitic comments, The New York Times revealed this week.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vogue announced on Friday that the Met’s 2027 Costume Institute exhibition and Gala next spring will be titled “John Galliano: Horizons,” and will highlight the designer’s influence on fashion while also addressing the 2011 controversy.
The New York Times reported that Wintour, Galliano and Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Met’s Costume Institute, met several times over the past year with “the most influential rabbis and Jewish leaders” in New York City “to get their thoughts on the potential issues with next year’s planned fashion extravaganza … and perhaps their blessing for it.” The Jewish leaders who met with Wintour, Bolton and Galliano, include Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in North America.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said the organization believes Galliano, 65, “has genuinely worked through the issues that led to his antisemitic outburst years ago in Paris, and we have long since accepted his apology. His efforts to repair the damage his words caused and to learn from that incident should be applauded.”
“We do understand, however, why some Jews may question the decision to include Galliano’s work in an exhibit given the massive spike in antisemitism in recent years,” Greenblatt added. “And it’s not just the increase in incidents that’s at issue; it’s also the insensitivity that political leaders in this city and elsewhere have shown toward the Jewish community. We hope the museum leadership and those responsible for the presentation of this exhibit are responsive to this reality.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art said the 2027 Costume Institute exhibition “will directly address the rupture caused by [Galliano’s] antisemitic, racist, and anti-Asian conduct in 2010 and 2011.”
“Alongside Galliano’s extraordinary creative accomplishments, the exhibition will address the derogatory conduct that fundamentally altered his career and public reception,” the museum added. “In doing so, the exhibition will consider how artistic achievement should be understood alongside ethical accountability.”
Galliano spent two seasons with Givenchy before taking over in 1996 as creative director of Christian Dior, which he led until 2011. His tenure ended after he was caught on video that year berating a couple at a Paris bar with vile antisemitic insults while he was drunk. He told the couple, a Jewish woman and her Asian boyfriend, “Dirty Jewish face, you should be dead” and “f–king Asian bastard, I will kill you.”
A video then surfaced that showed Galliano, in the same restaurant, making antisemitic comments at patrons while drunk in October 2010. During the outburst, Galliano said, “I love Hitler” and “People like you would be dead today. Your mothers, your forefathers, would be f–king gassed and f–king dead.”
He was arrested and fired from Dior in 2011 because of the antisemitic comments. A court in Paris then convicted the designer of a hate crime and he was ordered to pay fines and damages. Galliano apologized for his antisemitic remarks, blaming his actions on alcohol and drug addiction, and said he has no recollection of making the comments. He also denied being antisemitic or racist. He told Vanity Fair in June 2013 that his antisemitic comments were “the worst thing I have said in my life.” He apologized again for the remarks in his 2024 documentary, “High & Low — John Galliano.”
Galliano was the creative director of Maison Margiela from 2014-2024 and has won the British Fashion Designer of the Year four times. He is only the third living designer to receive a solo exhibit at The Met, following in the steps of Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons in 2017.
Wintour, who is also chief content officer of Condé Nast, defended the decision to honor the designer.
“There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano,” she said in a statement shared by Vogue. “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. 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.”
“Horizons” will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 9, 2027 through Jan. 9, 2028.
