John Galliano was my favourite fashion designer. When I began my style self-education as a teenager, Galliano’s haute couture designs for Christian Dior had everything that attracted me to fashion–extravagance, theatricality, historicism, and romance. What better escape from the bleak world of high school? I cut out pictures of his designs from Vogue. I learned by heart each of his collections, dating back to his stint at Givenchy. I wore out my tape of a Fashion File special that sound-tracked his shows with techno-enhanced classical music. I was a Galliano fan boy.
But, by 2011, I lost track of his career. (Ironic, given that I was then writing about fashion– something teenage Max had never dreamt of.) By then, Galliano’s over the top shows for Dior came across like big-budgeted costume parties. No matter the inspiration (Old Hollywood, Ancient Egypt, the homeless), they blended together. They were still brilliant, but always Galliano. Some people grow out of the fantasy worlds of Tolkien or Rowling. I grew out of Galliano.
The moment had long passed for him to radically alter the way regular people dressed. His early designs in the 1980’s offered new ideas for the construction of everyday clothes. But, as Colin McDowell writes in Galliano, the industry chickened out.
“Galliano’s cut was quite impossible to mass-produce using existing technical knowledge and experience. But the failure of the industry–and it failed itself as much as it failed Galliano–was to leave it at that point. Nobody was courageous and forward-thinking enough to realize the challenge and address it by finding techniques which would makes it possible to manufacture such exciting clothes for a mass market perfectly ready for them…Instead, the fashion world sold out to the power suit, easy to make and simple to sell in bulk.”
You can see Galliano’s ascension to the House of Dior, the pinnacle of French fashion, as a gilded cage. The industry bankrolled his wildest fantasies, but critics viewed them as just that–impractical dreams from an over-creative mind.
I felt some distance towards him even before his arrest in Paris in early 2011 for an anti-Semitic outburst. “I love Hitler,” he told a group of women he was fighting with at a bar. “People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers would all be fucking gassed.” The alcohol-fueled altercation was caught on videotape and quickly went viral.
Despite apologizing unreservedly, the French government, which has strong anti-discrimination laws, charged Galliano with making anti-Semitic comments, fined him around $31,000, and revoked his French Legion of Honour. His financial backers fired him from both Dior and his self-titled label. He left France, entered rehab, and disappeared. Despite the odd defender, the fashion world, which at one point celebrated the designer as its savior, went silent.
Until late last week, when Oscar de la Renta announced that he had given Galliano a temporary residency at his studio for the weeks leading up to New York fashion week. What exactly this entails is unclear, but what it symbolizes is unmistakable. De la Renta is using his respected position to ease Galliano back into an industry that had moved on. There are strong rumours that Anna Wintour had been looking for comeback opportunities for him for some time. Galliano has powerful friends in Oscar and Anna.
“I am an alcoholic,” he told Women’s Wear Daily. “I have been in recovery for the past two years. Several years prior to my sobriety, I descended into the madness of the disease. I said and did things which hurt others, especially members of the Jewish community. I have expressed my sorrow privately and publicly for the pain which I caused, and I continue to do so. I remain committed to making amends to those I have hurt.”
The Anti-Defamation League has accepted his apology and supports his return, but that sentiment is not shared by everyone. I have friends who I know will never forgive him. How can I argue? I never want to see a Mel Gibson movie ever again. But that’s because the actor’s violent outbursts, personal politics, and odious comments have forever coloured the way I see his films. (Films, I should note, I was barely interested in the first place.)
The situation is different with Galliano. You can’t see his offensive comments reflected in his beautiful designs. Or so I thought, until I unearthed costume designer Patricia Fields’ defense of his remarks: “It’s theatre … It’s farce. But people in fashion don’t recognize the farce in it. All of a sudden, they don’t know him.”
Galliano, who began his career as a dresser at the National Theatre in London, has always embraced the theatricality of fashion. His haute couture collections often veered into the realm of costume, his manneristic models looking like they wandered off a Baz Luhrmann set. In his never-ending search for source material, Galliano was unafraid to embrace touchy subjects. While still a student, he showed a collection titled “Afghanistan Repudiates Western Ideals.” At Dior, he drew inspiration from Aboriginal, African, and Asian traditions, despite charges of cultural appropriation, and devoted an entire collection to the look of homeless people, despite the question of sensitivity.
Galliano may view life as theatre. Off duty, his speaking style may combine the fashion world habit of hyperbole with the dark, politically incorrect humour of camp. The statement “I love Hitler” is so offensive and indefensible, it’s almost as though Galliano was trying on an exaggerated anti-Semitism in order to provoke a strong response.
If this was the case, and it’s just a theory, it’s no excuse. When we use discriminatory language for any purpose, we are using the entire history of those words as a rhetorical weapon, even if we’re not fully aware of it. And no one in Europe is unaware of the tragic history of anti-Semitism.
It’s easier for me to never forgive someone like Mel Gibson. It’s much more difficult when it’s a figure I followed and admired; I don’t want their career forever tarnished by the worst moment of their life. Re-watching that Fashion File special now is sad for a number of reasons. When it was filmed in 2000, Galliano wasn’t only at the top of his game artistically, but had given up alcohol and gotten in shape with the help of a personal trainer. We now know that healthy state did not last.
Near the end of the special, the host Tim Blanks refers to romanticism as the thread throughout all of Galliano’s work. “There’s always a little germ of pessimism in romanticism, and in the pursuit of beauty, because all beauty must fade. There is a sense that this is a ephemeral moment, and it will pass.” He asks the designer if that’s something he thinks about.
“In any great romance,” Galliano answers, “there is that moment when it will end. And that moment is quite gorgeous.” He smiles.
I have conflicting feelings about John Galliano. I’m not sure I forgive him. But I hope, away from the history of Paris, New York offers him a second chance at health and happiness. And I suspect his beautiful moment will have a second act. After everything, I’m still a romantic as well.
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Max Mosher writes about style for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @max_mosher_.
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