Anna Wintour responds to 2027 Met Gala theme backlash over designer's 'dark past'
Former editor-in-chief of Vogue and host of the Met Gala, Anna Wintour, has spoken out after the organizers of the 2027 Met Gala were criticised for honoring a designer with a 'dark past'.
The theme of next year's fashion show will be centred around designer John Galliano, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s spring 2027 exhibition being titled 'John Galliano: Horizons'.
65-year-old Galliano began his fashion career with Givenchy in 1995, before moving onto Dior as creative director, a position he held from 1997 to 2011.
He held the same position at Maison Margiela from 2014 to 2024.
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The designer has been plagued with a lot of controversy though, including being convicted of committing two hate crimes in Paris, which resulted in him facing a $8,500.
It came after an video saw Galliano declare his love for Hitler at a restaurant in the French capital.
Speaking of the decision to dedicate next year's Met Gala to the fashion designer, Wintour 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."
She 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."
Meanwhile, Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, Andrew Bolton, said: "Every Galliano collection begins as a journey among things separated by time, place, or medium: portrait and posture, silhouette and story, memory and material.
"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."
Bolton added: "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."
Galliano was arrested twice in the space of a matter of months in 2010 and 2011 after he was first accused of insulting a 40-year-old woman in a bar.
Just four months later, the fashion designer was alleged to have verbally assaulted two people at the same establishment.
During the trial, Galliano said he couldn't recall the second incident due to an addiction to sleeping pills and alcohol.
Recalling the attacks in the 2024 documentary High & Low — John Galliano, the former Dior head honcho said: "It was a disgusting thing, foul thing that I did. It was just horrific.
"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."
Callum Jones