Met Gala 2027 Honors John Galliano, Controversy and All
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- Met Gala 2027 will be devoted to John Galliano, making the British designer only the third living designer honored with the Met Gala theme in the event's 78-year history, according to the museum's announcement last week.
- Galliano held the head design position at Dior from 1996 to 2011, when he was fired after a lengthy, explicit-filled antisemitic rant at a Paris bar and was ultimately convicted of a hate crime in a French court.
- Anna Wintour and Andrew Bolton held months of meetings with Jewish leaders and rabbis ahead of the announcement to vet the controversial choice, and won endorsement from both the Anti-Defamation League and Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism.
- The ADL told The New York Times it believed Galliano "genuinely worked through the issues that led to his antisemitic outburst" and that his "efforts to repair the damage his words caused... should be applauded," per the source.
- The exhibition, titled "John Galliano: Horizons," will directly address the "rupture caused by his antisemitic, racist, and anti-Asian conduct" and consider how "artistic achievement should be understood alongside ethical accountability," per a museum press release.
- Galliano returned to fashion in 2013 with a residency at Oscar de la Renta before being named creative director of Maison Margiela in 2014, and his designs regularly sell at auction for over $100,000.
Why it matters: The Met's decision — secured through months of private meetings with Jewish leaders — reframes Galliano's rehabilitation as a formal institutional endorsement rather than an industry shrug, with the museum choosing to exhibit his antisemitic hate crime conviction alongside his couture. Galliano's pieces clearing six figures at auction confirms the commercial gravity the Met is now putting its curatorial weight behind.
