Met Gala to honour John Galliano, 16 years after his Hitler rant

John Galliano is to be honoured at the 2027 Met Gala, 16 years after an antisemitism scandal in which he declared his love for Adolf Hitler and told Jewish women their families should have been “gassed”.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced John Galliano: Horizons, a major exhibition devoted to the British designer which will provide the inspiration for next year’s Met Gala.

The decision represents one of the most significant moments in Galliano’s return to fashion following the 2011 scandal that led to his dismissal from Dior and a criminal conviction in France.

Opening on 9 May, 2027, the exhibition will trace more than four decades of his career, beginning with his celebrated 1984 Central Saint Martins graduate collection and continuing through his work for major fashion houses including Maison Margiela.

It will make Galliano only the third living designer to receive a major Costume Institute exhibition, following Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo in 2017.

But the honour has renewed scrutiny of the antisemitic abuse that brought Galliano’s career crashing down at its height.

Footage made public in 2011 showed the designer during an incident in a Paris café saying: “I love Hitler” and telling a group of women “People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers would all be f***ing gassed.”

However, some prominent Jewish figures have backed Galliano’s rehabilitation, arguing that his subsequent efforts to apologise and address his behaviour should also be recognised.

Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), told The New York Times: “We believe John Galliano has genuinely worked through the issues that led to his antisemitic outburst years ago in Paris, and we have long since accepted his apology.

“His efforts to repair the damage his words caused and to learn from that incident should be applauded.”

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, was among Jewish leaders consulted as plans for the exhibition developed.

After meeting Galliano, Jacobs told The New York Times: “The word I come back to is ‘sincerity’. He was open. He looked right at us and spoke in a clear way, not as if he had memorised talking points.”

The 2011 scandal triggered widespread condemnation and brought Galliano’s high-profile career at Dior to an abrupt end.

Natalie Portman, the Israeli-born Jewish actress who was a Dior ambassador at the time, said she was “deeply shocked” by his comments and would not be associated with him “in any way”.

Dior initially suspended Galliano before dismissing him as creative director, describing his comments as “particularly odious”.

Later that year, a French court found him guilty of making public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity and handed him a suspended €6,000 fine.

There were also those who argued that Galliano’s comments, while indefensible, did not reflect deeply held antisemitic beliefs.

French-Jewish actress Eva Green said at the time: “Sometimes, you can make mistakes. I don’t think he’s antisemitic. I’m Jewish. I don’t think he has anything against the Jews. I think it’s more that he was probably a bit drunk.”

Galliano has repeatedly apologised for his conduct and denied being antisemitic. He has spoken publicly about his struggles with alcohol and drug addiction at the time, as well as the treatment and recovery that followed.

After several years away from the top of the fashion industry, Galliano returned in 2014 as creative director of Maison Margiela, where his collections received widespread critical acclaim.

The Met exhibition, which runs until 9 January, 2028, will bring together garments, accessories, sketches and archival material from across his career.

According to the museum, it will examine Galliano’s ability to combine “history, geography, artistic tradition and identity into garments of extraordinary imagination”.

Anna Wintour, a Met trustee and longtime supporter of Galliano, said the exhibition would not avoid “any of the darkness in John’s past” and would consider the “full arc” of his career.

“There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano,” she said.

“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.”

Women’s fashion magazine Marie Claire said the exhibition would have to grapple with both Galliano’s creative legacy and the harm caused by his past behaviour.

“Ultimately, the challenge for the exhibition will be balancing the celebration of Galliano’s creative contributions with a meaningful examination of the harm caused by his past conduct – and the broader questions it raised about artistic legacy, accountability and redemption,” it said.