Notorious Antisemite To Be Honored By Met Gala After Jewish Leaders Sign Off

Former Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour went out of her way to get a pardon for fashion designer John Galliano following an antisemitic rant that should have seen him shunned from the industry forever.

Wintour, who is a trustee for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, met with Jewish leaders in an attempt to justify making Galliano the 2027 honoree of the Met Gala next spring. She put in an extraordinary amount of effort to clear the designer’s name, which has led to questions of whether the same effort would be put forth for someone who had used racist or “anti-transgender” slurs.

Galliano rose to fame as the head designer for Dior from 1996 until 2011. That came crashing down following the release of a video of his rant, showing Galliano hurl antisemitic slurs at customers in a Paris cafe. During the tirade, he praised Hitler and told other cafe patrons that their ancestors should have been gassed.

At the time, he blamed drug and alcohol addictions for his outburst. He was fired from Dior and fined, and his image was ruined.

Last week, however, The New York Times published a report stating that Wintour, Galliano, and Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Met’s Costume Institute, have been meeting with “influential rabbis and Jewish leaders” over the past year. Their goal was “to get their thoughts on the potential issues with next year’s planned fashion extravaganza — a show dedicated to Galliano’s work — and perhaps their blessing for it.”

Per the Times, the Jewish leaders have decided to accept Galliano’s apology and give their approval to have him be the 2027 Met Gala honoree. 

“The fear clearly was the show could be met with a lot of resistance — not just skepticism, but a feeling of it’s wrong,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in North America, said. Rabbi Jacobs said Galliano’s overall demeanor is part of what convinced him. 

“The word I come back to is ‘sincerity,’” he said. “[Galliano] was open. He looked right at us and spoke in a clear way, not as if he had memorized talking points.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a comment to the Times: “We believe John Galliano 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.”

Even if Wintour is trying to push negative press and reinstate Galliano to his former glory, not everyone is on board. The Times just published an op-ed by Dana Thomas, author of the book “Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.” She argued that choosing Galliano as the honoree was a “very bad mistake.”

“The Met is attempting to tackle questions regarding cultural memory, accountability, rehabilitation and reputation. In the process, it is asserting the ability of powerful cultural institutions to decide when achievements of talent outweigh failures of morality,” she wrote.

Thomas noted that the drunken tirade was not a one-time event, and said Galliano was known for saying terrible things for the entirety of his career.