Is John Galliano's Rehabilitation Complete?
A viral runway, Met Gala ubiquity and rumors of an LVMH return have fashion folks talking.
“Who would ever wear this — and where?” That’s what some said about John Galliano during his heyday throughout the 90s. Others, particularly those with influence in the fashion world, saw genius. “Fashion will have a future with people like John Galliano,” former Vogue Editor-At-Large André Leon Talley said of the designer early in Galliano’s career. “People who have great imagination and create entire collections with no money, no financing, no heavy perfume behind them. This has been handmade with people who are passionate, young students from St. Martin sitting on the floor sewing bustles, eating McDonalds at three in the morning.”
When you witness some of Galliano’s greatest runway collections — ”Princess Lucretia” Spring/Summer 1994 or Givenchy’s “Princess and the Pea” Spring/Summer 1996 — you see the mastery of imagination meeting craft. He seduced not just his admirers, but also those in the industry who defied him. “John was my friend and he’s a fashion designer and the other shows are just jobs,” Kate Moss remarks in the documentary High & Low: John Galliano. The doc features a number of Galliano-philes including Penelope Cruz, Charlize Theron and Naomi Campbell.
But what he possessed in talent, he lacked in tact. In 2000, during his tenure at Dior, he presented one of his most controversial shows inspired by the homeless he observed while running along the Seine. The fury from the general public resulted in riots outside the Dior maison. Over a decade later, in 2011, his career would derail entirely when a video leaked of a drunken antisemetic rant in which he slurred at a couple at restaurant in Paris: “I love Hitler, and people like you would be dead today. Your mothers, your forefathers would be fucking gassed.” He was promptly fired from Dior, convicted of “public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity” and went into rehab for what he has described as “alcoholism and addiction.” The fashion world exiled him, never to be heard from again. But, of course, that didn’t last.
At Monday’s Met, his pieces were among the most talked about, worn by Kim Kardashian, Zendaya, Ariana Grande, Bad Bunny, Gwendoline Christie and Adrien Brody.
Maison Margiela, the house which brought Galliano in as creative director in 2014, “won” the Met Gala, according to British Vogue. Fashionista called the Gala “basically the John Galliano show.” Between this and the “universally spellbound” reaction to his Spring/Summer 2024 collection back in January, as well as persistent rumors of a return back into the LVMH group, Galliano’s decades-long rehabilitation back into the pantheon of fashion elite seems complete.
Seems, for certain. But is it? Let’s investigate.