The theme of the 2027 Met Gala has been announced as John Galliano: Horizons, honoring the British designer whose soaring career was upended by a video capturing him making antisemitic remarks at a Paris cafe.
Anna Wintour, who oversees the Met Gala, made the announcement via Vogue, saying the exhibition would not avoid the controversy. Wintour said Galliano’s career is not defined by a moment, calling it something he will live with for the rest of his life, and added that the show will take in the full arc of his career and grapple with all of it.
Galliano, 65, is only the third living designer to have an entire Met Gala built around his work, following Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons in 2017.
Rise and Fall
Born in Gibraltar and raised in England, Galliano built his reputation through the 1980s and 1990s with the backing of Wintour and her colleague Andre Leon Talley. A turning point came in 1995 when he released his Pin-Up collection and was appointed chief designer at Givenchy. He later moved to Dior, where he produced a reported 32 shows a year.
Behind the scenes, Galliano was privately struggling with what the source describes as a serious drinking and pill problem. His boss Bernard Arnault confronted him about it directly, prompting Galliano to tear off his shirt and ask whether he looked like an alcoholic.
In December 2010, he was filmed at the Paris cafe La Perle drunkenly directing antisemitic slurs at two women he mistakenly believed were Jewish, telling them he loved Hitler and that their forefathers would be gassed and dead. He was subsequently unable to remember the encounter.
The footage went viral. Galliano was fired from Dior and later convicted in France of making racist and antisemitic remarks during two separate incidents at La Perle. His Legion of Honor was rescinded and he was also dismissed from his own self-named label.
Rehabilitation
After checking into a rehabilitation facility in Arizona, Galliano began a slow return to public life. A key moment came in July 2011 when his close friend Kate Moss asked him to design her wedding gown for her marriage to Jamie Hince. Galliano later told Vogue that Moss dared him to be himself again and that the experience served as his creative rehabilitation.
Moss, speaking on Desert Island Discs, said Galliano is not a bad person and that people are not themselves when they drink and say things they would never say sober.
Actress Eva Green, who is Jewish, also defended him at the time, telling the Guardian she did not believe he was antisemitic and that he had always been kind to her, suggesting he had been drunk and that something may have happened with the women filming him.
Natalie Portman, also Jewish and associated with Dior, firmly condemned him.
In 2014, Galliano was hired as chief designer for Maison Margiela, a role he held for a decade. A documentary on his life, High and Low, was released in 2023.
The Exhibition
The 2027 exhibition will be assembled by Andrew Bolton, the curator behind the 2011 Met Gala honoring Alexander McQueen. Wintour said in her statement that there is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than Galliano, praising his body of work at Dior, Givenchy, Margiela, and his namesake label as combining erudition and creativity, darkness and light.
By 2015, Galliano’s designs were already featured in the China-themed Met Gala exhibition, also curated by Bolton. In a documentary about that event, Galliano said the creative process is his meditation and that the fantasy world he creates is an escape that allowed him to consider returning to an industry where he had become an outcast.
