NEED TO KNOW
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The 2027 Met Gala theme has been revealed as “John Galliano: Horizons” and will recognize the work of John Galliano
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The designer upended his career in 2011 following a string of antisemitic and racist incidents
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Vogue’s Anna Wintour said of Galliano, “He’s a great designer and his career isn’t defined by a moment”
The 2027 Met Gala theme has been revealed.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s spring 2027 exhibition will be titled “John Galliano: Horizons,” recognizing the work of designer John Galliano. This marks only the third time a living designer is the focus of the exhibit: the first was Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and the second was Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons in 2017.
Galliano, now 65, started his career at Givenchy in 1995 before he took over as creative director of Dior from 1997 to 2011. From 2014 to 2024, he was the creative director of the Parisian fashion house Maison Margiela.
Credit: Cindy Ord/MG24/Getty
The designer was one the couture fashion industry’s most influential names and visionaries throughout the ‘90s and early ‘00s, before he upended his career in 2011 following a string of antisemitic and racist incidents, including the infamous video in which he professed his love for Hitler at a restaurant in Paris.
Following his multiple outbursts, Galliano was convicted of committing two hate crimes in Paris and faced a fine equivalent to $8,500.
John Galliano during Dior’s 2008 Cruise show.Credit: M. Von Holden/WireImage
In the first incident, which resulted in Galliano’s February 2011 arrest, he was accused of verbally assaulting two people, including a man named Philippe Virgitti, at La Perle, a cafe down the street from his Marais apartment. The second case involved an incident in October 2010, at the same bar, where he was accused of insulting a 40-year-old woman.
During the trial, he’d taken the stand in his own defense and testified that he didn’t remember the outburst that was directed at Virgitti due to a triple addiction to sleeping pills, Valium and alcohol.
“I have an addiction. I am currently seeking treatment,” he told the courtroom at the time.
In Kevin Macdonald’s 2024 documentary, High & Low — John Galliano, which includes footage of the two attacks, Galliano admits: “It was a disgusting thing, foul thing that I did. It was just horrific.”
Reflecting on the events, the designer, who was born in the British territory Gibraltar, adds, “I can say I’m not racist, but every day you actually learn that all of us are a bit. But we just need to unlearn it and like immigrants. I am one. I was one.”
John Galliano and Charlize Theron at the 2006 Met Gala.Credit: Peter Kramer/Getty
The Met’s exhibit does not plan on shying away from Galliano’s controversies.
“Every Galliano collection begins as a journey among things separated by time, place, or medium: portrait and posture, silhouette and story, memory and material,” Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute Andrew Bolton said in a release, per Vogue. “‘Horizons’ approaches fashion as a form of cartography, mapping not territories but affinities, tensions, and transformations. It traces how images become ideas, ideas become material, and material becomes emotion.”
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He continued, “Yet a horizon reveals not only what lies before us but also where we stand. The exhibition therefore considers both how Galliano has remapped the world through fashion and how his conduct, its consequences, and changing cultural values have reshaped our understanding of his work.”
John Galliano and Anna Wintour in 2021.Credit: Dave Benett/Getty
Anna Wintour, Vogue’s former editor-in-chief and current global editorial director, said, “There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano. 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.”
Wintour added, “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. 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.”
Read the original article on People
