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FASHION
The Next Met Gala Is Already Controversial
John Galliano, the designer convicted of a crime after public antisemitic remarks in Paris, will be the focus of the 2027 event. Who will sponsor it?
Galliano at the 2019 Met Gala. GETTY IMAGES
By Ashley Wong
Outcries over the 2026 Met Gala being sponsored by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos didn’t stop it from raking in more than $42 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute—a record fundraising haul.
The 2027 gala will be headlined by John Galliano, the designer who has been re-embraced by the fashion industry in the years since he was convicted in 2011 for making antisemitic remarks in Paris, where public insults based on religion, race and ethnicity are a crime.
The Galliano gala and corresponding museum exhibition come at a time when institutions have been willing to revisit characters once considered irredeemable. In announcing his involvement, the Met didn’t name any sponsors of the event, which since 1995 has been chaired by Anna Wintour, the global editorial director at Vogue and a longtime Galliano supporter. Past years’ gala announcements have named sponsors; a representative for the Met said that sponsors for 2027 would be revealed at a later date.
Galliano and Wintour, who has continued to appear by the designer’s side during his comeback. ROSE HARTMAN/ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES
Amy Odell, author of “Anna: The Biography,” characterized the choice of Galliano as perplexing from a fund-raising standpoint. “Are sponsors going to be OK with that?” she asked.
Since 2023, the Met Gala has raised over $120 million for the Costume Institute, with support from companies including Louis Vuitton, TikTok, Instagram and Condé Nast, which owns Vogue.
Requests for comment from Louis Vuitton, TikTok, Instagram and other past sponsors including Apple and Gucci weren’t immediately returned. A Condé Nast representative, in response to questions including whether the company intends to sponsor next year’s Met Gala, cited a statement that Wintour made last week.
“There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano,” read the statement, which noted the designer’s professional highs and lows. “The show will take in the full arc of his career and grapple with all of it.”
In a separate emailed statement, Jonathan Newhouse, Condé Nast’s board chairman, referenced his longtime backing of Galliano. “I was proud to support him during a difficult period,” Newhouse said. “I hope he continues to create for years to come.”
The blockbuster fundraiser may become less essential, however. In May, the New York Times reported that the Costume Institute is potentially on track to becoming financially self-sufficient by 2030, and possibly 2028.
Galliano made his antisemitic remarks while serving as creative director at Dior, where he was promptly fired. He also lost his role at his namesake John Galliano brand. Galliano has said that he was drunk and struggling with substance abuse at the time. He has since gone to rehab, gotten sober and sought counsel from Jewish leaders.
Galliano with Dior models in 2010. GETTY IMAGES
As plans for the 2027 Met Gala came together, Galliano, Wintour and Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton met with representatives from the Anti-Defamation League and Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan, among others.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in North America, attended two meetings, including one with Galliano. He initially had concerns about how the public might react, he said. But his worries were soothed by what he characterized as a sincere desire among Galliano and gala organizers to use the event to demonstrate how people can atone for mistakes.
The Jewish leaders pushed for the gala’s corresponding exhibition to prominently acknowledge Galliano’s past behavior. Titled “John Galliano: Horizons,” the exhibit will span his work from 1984 to 2024 and begin with material addressing his antisemitic comments.
“Until I met John, until I had those conversations, I wasn’t 100% sure what I would find,” Jacobs said. But he did not believe he was being used as a shield for criticism. “If I didn’t feel that John had done the hard work of earning back his good name and making amends for his horrifying rant, I would have pushed back and not lent my support.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that his organization accepted Galliano’s apology long ago. “It’s on the Met and partners to meet the moment, not with token gestures around one exhibit,” he added.
Part of the issue, said Hen Mazzig, a Jewish writer and Israel advocate with more than 700,000 followers across Instagram and X, is that the public was not privy to the meetings. Even if the exhibit takes a nuanced approach, Mazzig added, that care may not translate to the gala itself—a party that derives its power from glamour and a star-studded red carpet where A-listers dress theatrically in outfits that pay homage to the affair’s theme.
Rihanna in Galliano at the 2018 Met Gala.
“There is no footnote on a party,” said Mazzig.
Buzz about a possible Galliano exhibit at the Met had been percolating in the fashion world for years, said Dana Thomas, author of the 2015 biography “Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.” Thomas said she didn’t believe the exhibit had widespread public support yet, “and that is what they are going to have to deal with for the next nine months.”
Interest in Galliano’s Dior designs has recently found a new audience, as younger generations have increasingly sought out Y2K-era vintage fashion. In March, the designer announced a two-year partnership with Zara, the fast-fashion giant owned by the Spanish company Inditex. A representative for Inditex did not respond to requests for comment.
Galliano had previously spent a decade as the creative director at Maison Margiela, starting in 2014. His final show for the brand in 2024 received widespread glowing reviews. Throughout Galliano’s comeback, Wintour has continued to appear by his side.
The year he started at Margiela, Galliano presented a British Fashion Award to Wintour, who accepted it wearing one of his designs for the brand. In January, the two sat next to each other in the front row at a Dior fashion show in Paris. In a 2023 documentary about Galliano, Wintour said she didn’t worry about how their friendship might affect her reputation. “I just wanted to help him,” Wintour says in the film.
Odell, the Wintour biographer, said the announcement of Galliano’s Met retrospective reminded her of something that André Leon Talley, Vogue’s longtime editor at large who died in 2022, told the author when she asked him what Wintour’s greatest strength was.
“Talley said, ‘She can turn a no into a yes,’ ” Odell said.
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