Next year’s Met Gala in New York could be postponed in a row over the decision to honor British fashion designer John Galliano – 15 years after he made an anti-Semitic tirade.
The fashion fundraiser will take place on May 3, which is also Yom HaShoah, the Jewish day of Holocaust Remembrance.
Religious leaders are said to be furious about a planned tribute to 65-year-old Galliano at the gala. Customers have reportedly threatened to withdraw gifts.
His career collapsed in 2011 after footage emerged of his anti-Semitic tirade in a Paris cafe, which read: “I love Hitler, he’s great.”
He spent years making amends, apologizing and collaborating with Jewish figures, returning to the fashion world in 2014 with Maison Margiela.
The gala’s chairwoman, Anna Wintour, defended his honor and said his career should not be defined by a single moment.
Next year’s Met Gala could be rescheduled due to decision to honor designer John Galliano – 15 years after his anti-Semitic tirade (Galliano pictured with Anna Wintour in 2010)
His career collapsed in 2011 after footage emerged of his anti-Semitic rant in a Paris cafe, which read: ‘I love Hitler, he’s great’ (pictured in 2025)
The theme of next year’s Met Gala is John Galliano: Horizons, a tribute to the scandalous and groundbreaking fashion designer.
Galliano rose to fame as a dazzling 1990s prodigy at Givenchy and Dior, championed by Vogue editor Anna.
His career went up in flames after he was filmed in December 2010 drunkenly ranting to two women he wrongly believed were Jewish: “I love Hitler” and that their “ancestors would be fucking gassed and dead.”
He was gradually able to return to the spotlight after his longtime good friend Kate Moss hired him to design her wedding dress.
In 2023, a documentary about his turbulent life, High & Low, was released, which strengthened the renewed public interest in him as a holy monster of the fashion industry.
Galliano is the third living designer to host an entire Met Gala based on his work, following Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Comme des Garcons’ Rei Kawakubo in 2017.
The new exhibition is curated by Andrew Bolton, the curator who rose to fame with the 2011 Met Gala honoring Galliano’s rival Alexander McQueen, who hanged himself on the eve of his mother’s funeral last year.
“There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this magnitude than John Galliano,” Wintour said in her statement announcing next year’s theme.
Galliano is pictured with Linda Evangelista (left), Naomi Campbell (center) and Gisele Bundchen (second from right) at the end of one of his 2007 Dior shows in Paris
“His body of work – at Dior, Givenchy, Margiela, his eponymous label and more – combines erudition and creativity, darkness and light, the past, present and future, all brilliantly fused together,” she added.
“He is a great designer and his career is not defined by a moment, something he will live with for the rest of his life,” Wintour said. ‘The exhibition does not shy away from the darkness of John’s past. It’s part of what shaped him. The show covers the full arc of his career and grapples with everything.”
Born in Gibraltar and raised in England, Galliano began his career in the 1980s and received strong support from both Wintour and her aide Andre Leon Talley.
The first turning point in his professional life was the year 1995, when he released his iconic Pin-Up collection and was hired as head designer at Givenchy.
His career went from strength to strength when he moved to Dior and threw himself into a whirlwind of activity, making as many as 32 shows a year.
