Next year's Met Gala in New York could be rescheduled following anger over its decision to honour British fashion designer John Galliano, 15 years after he launched an antisemitic tirade in a Paris cafe.
The annual fashion fundraiser is currently scheduled for May 3, a date that coincides with Yom HaShoah. The day is observed internationally as the Jewish day of Holocaust remembrance, commemorating the six million Jews who perished during the Second World War.
Religious leaders are reportedly furious about the planned tribute to the 65-year-old designer. The backlash has escalated to the point where patrons have threatened to rescind their financial gifts to the institution.
The Met Gala is an annual fundraising event held for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in Manhattan. It traditionally marks the opening of the Costume Institute's annual fashion exhibition, drawing A-list celebrities from fashion, film and music.
Galliano's 2011 downfall
The theme of the upcoming gala has been announced as John Galliano: Horizons, designed as a tribute to the pioneering and scandalous fashion figure.
Galliano's highly successful career crashed dramatically in 2011 after he was filmed drunkenly ranting at two women he mistakenly believed were Jewish. In the footage, captured at a cafe in the French capital, he told them "I love Hitler" and said that their "forefathers would be f***ing gassed and f***ing dead."
The incident led to his immediate dismissal from his role as creative director at Dior. He spent the subsequent years apologising for his actions and working with Jewish figures to make amends for the outburst.
His longtime close friend Kate Moss, the British supermodel, aided his gradual return to the spotlight when she enlisted him to design her wedding dress. In 2014, Galliano made a formal return to the fashion industry when he was appointed creative director of the Paris-based luxury house Maison Margiela.
Anna Wintour defends the tribute
Vogue editor and Met Gala chairman Anna Wintour has defended the decision to honour Galliano with the upcoming exhibition. Wintour has chaired or co-chaired the gala since 1995 and has been a vigorous supporter of Galliano since his early days.
"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," Wintour said. "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."
In a statement announcing next year's theme, Wintour said there was no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale.
"His body of work - at Dior, Givenchy, Margiela, his namesake label and more - combines erudition and creativity, darkness and light, the past, the present, the future all smashing together in a brilliant way," she added.
A rare honour for a living designer
The new exhibition is being assembled by Andrew Bolton, the curator who achieved notoriety for the 2011 Met Gala. That year's exhibition honoured Galliano's competitor, the British designer Alexander McQueen, who had taken his own life the previous year on the eve of his mother's funeral.
Galliano will be only the third living designer to have an entire Met Gala based on his work. The institution previously focused on Yves Saint Laurent in 1983, and Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo in 2017.
Born on Gibraltar and raised in England, Galliano began his career in the 1980s. He secured the vigorous support of both Wintour and her adjutant, the late fashion journalist Andre Leon Talley, catapulting to stardom as a dazzling 1990s wunderkind.
A major turning point in his professional life came in 1995 when he released his iconic Pin-Up collection and was hired as chief designer at Givenchy.
His career proceeded from strength to strength as he moved to Dior, plunging into a whirlwind of activity that saw him churn out a staggering 32 fashion shows a year.
Public interest in the designer was renewed recently with the 2023 release of High & Low, a documentary film detailing his turbulent life. The release intensified interest in him as a "sacred monster" of the fashion industry, a term often used for eccentric and highly influential public figures.
