It is an incredibly difficult task to set a dress on fire inside a cramped Manhattan apartment without sending the building’s fire alarms into a screaming frenzy, but in the spring of 2011, I found myself determined to do exactly that. The preparation was a quiet, desperate ritual: first, I stood on my tiptoes and used a Swiffer sweeper to violently knock the plastic smoke detector off my low ceiling, disabling its battery before it could betray me. Then, I retreated to my small bathroom, placed the dress—a breathtaking Christian Dior cotton mini-dress designed by the legendary John Galliano, which I had triumphantly salvaged from a dusty rack at a local Goodwill for a mere sixty-five dollars—into the porcelain basin of my bathtub. I doused the delicate fabric in lighter fluid, struck a match, and watched the orange flames consume the fabric while I sat on the cold tile floor and wept bitter tears of grief and anger. I was burning the dress because I felt like an absolute fool, a naive worshiper at an altar that had just been revealed to be entirely hollow. For years, like almost everyone else who worked in the frantic, beautiful, and demanding world of high fashion, I had believed with absolute certainty that John Galliano was the undisputed master of the runway, a creative genius who turned mere clothing into transcendent art. His garments did not just hang on a frame; they hugged and sculpted every body type, even those that did not conform to the industry’s punishingly thin standards, with an astonishing and empathetic precision. We in the fashion industry revered him with the kind of unquestioning, breathless devotion usually reserved for legendary athletes or religious icons, convinced that his visionary mind could do no wrong.
That collective reverence came to a screeching, horrific halt in February of 2011, when a video surfaced of a visibly intoxicated Galliano in a Parisian cafe, hurling venomous, deranged, and deeply personal antisemitic and racist insults at unsuspecting patrons. On camera, he snarled about a “fing Asian bastard” and a “fing ugly Jewish bitch,” before declaring, with a sickening and chillingly precise enthusiasm, his admiration for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime’s systematic execution of millions of people. Hearing him praise the very furnaces where my own ancestors, along with countless other families, were stripped of their humanity and burned alive—some while still breathing—shattered something deep inside me. After all, I am proudly and unapologetically one of those women he so viciously categorized, a Jewish woman whose family history is scarred by the legacy of the Holocaust. The revelation of his hatred transformed my beloved Dior dress from a treasured work of art into a toxic relic of betrayal, which is why I felt an overwhelming wave of fury when the news broke on a recent Friday evening that John Galliano, now sixty-five years old, would be the central focus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s upcoming Costume Institute exhibition. The Met Gala is not merely a party; it is the most-watched fashion event on the planet, generating nearly 1.7 billion views online and drawing up to 1.5 million visitors to its physical exhibits every year. By elevating Galliano to the centerpiece of this cultural phenomenon, the fashion establishment is preparing to restore him to the status of a living god, effectively erasing the gravity of his past transgressions on a global stage. To do this for a man who once publicly proclaimed that my family, and millions of people who share my heritage, should have been exterminated is a bitter, agonizing pill to swallow.
The timing of this announcement felt like a deliberate insult, sparking an immediate firestorm of outrage within my fashion industry group chats. My phone buzzed incessantly with furious texts from colleagues and friends: a Ralph Lauren VIP executive who had recently hosted me for Passover wrote that the news was deeply “insulting,” while an influential editor who frequently joins me for Shabbat dinners pointed out the irony of fashion events constantly clashing with holy days, adding the most pressing question on all of our minds: “Right NOW?” Indeed, the decision to celebrate Galliano at this particular moment in history feels incredibly tone-deaf and dangerous. According to recent data released by the NYPD, antisemitic incidents now account for over fifty-six percent of all reported hate crimes in New York City, marking an alarming eight and a half percent increase from the previous year. Just last month, a Jewish man was stabbed in broad daylight near the very neighborhood where Galliano’s future archive will be housed at the Met. Jewish mothers are now sending their young children to school wearing baseball caps to hide their yarmulkes out of fear of physical assault, and synagogues that were once open, welcoming community hubs have been forced to install double-gated security doors and hire armed guards. Online, the digital landscape is saturated with vitriol, where anonymous bots and radicalized keyboard warriors spread ancient conspiracy theories of Jewish supremacy while unfairly holding ordinary Jewish people worldwide responsible for the devastating geopolitics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To announce the glorification of a man who popularized these exact hateful tropes, during a period of such heightened vulnerability and fear for the Jewish community, felt incredibly reckless.
The strategic timing of the press release was also incredibly suspicious, utilizing a classic public relations tactic designed to minimize backlash. No major institution drops massive, controversial news on a Friday evening unless they are actively trying to bury it under the cover of the weekend, much like a disgraced celebrity announcing a divorce or a corporation quietly releasing a disastrous financial earnings report. Because the announcement was made right as the sun was setting on a Friday night, many observant Jewish professionals in the fashion world—including high-profile figures like model Karlie Kloss and legendary fashion editor Suzy Menkes—were already offline, unplugged for the Sabbath, and entirely unaware of the storm brewing in their industry. I, too, was slow to react to the news because I was physically sitting in the pews of my childhood synagogue when the press release went live. Ironically, this sanctuary was the very place where, perhaps a bit too early in my youth, I was shown black-and-white photographs of Jewish children who had been murdered and dumped into mass graves by the Nazi regime. Yet, this was also the sacred space where visiting Holocaust survivors taught me the most profound lesson of my life: that holding onto consuming rage, even when it is entirely justified, ultimately inflicts more damage upon your own spirit than it ever will upon your enemy. It was in those pews that I studied the teachings of classical scholars like Maimonides and modern rabbinical groups like T’ruah, who argue that while great injustices naturally provoke fear and anger, the ultimate spiritual gift is the ability to eventually let that anger go. They taught me that history is filled with brilliant creators who were also deeply flawed, and that human beings are entirely capable of producing magnificent art while simultaneously harboring monstrous tendencies.
It is through the lens of that complex spiritual education that I have spent the last several days reflecting on the Metropolitan Museum’s decision, and I have come to a conclusion that surprises even myself: I believe that holding an exhibition of John Galliano’s work is actually a necessary and valuable endeavor. My reasoning is threefold, rooted in the concepts of accountability, artistic merit, and theological grace. First, we must acknowledge that Galliano appears to have undertaken genuine, grueling personal work in the fifteen years since his career collapsed in that Parisian cafe. Following his firing from Dior, he did not simply hide away; he entered rehab, sought professional help for his addictions, and initiated private, difficult conversations with Jewish community leaders, including the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and former CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg, as well as former Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman. Reports indicate that he continues to meet with Jewish mentors and therapists to this day, engaging in a quiet, ongoing process of self-education and atonement rather than demanding immediate public forgiveness. Second, the clothes he created are, by any objective standard of design, absolutely extraordinary masterpieces that changed the course of fashion history. To dismiss his contributions as overrated would be intellectually dishonest; his designs for Dior and Maison Margiela belong in a world-class museum for the same reason that the brilliant but deeply antisemitic writings of Roald Dahl belong in libraries, and the philosophies of Thomas Jefferson belong on academic syllabi. We must learn to navigate the uncomfortable reality that troubled, and sometimes hateful, individuals are capable of creating things of profound beauty and cultural significance.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the tenets of Jewish tradition actually support the idea of allowing space for Galliano’s professional presence. Throughout our scriptures, we are commanded to look at our former adversaries and search for a shared spark of humanity, recognizing that while we must never forget past harms—as the word “remember” is fundamental to our faith—we are also obligated to accept genuine accountability when it is demonstrated. If we do not allow a path forward for those who have sincerely tried to correct their hateful behavior, then we render the concept of repentance entirely meaningless. Currently, Jewish communities around the world are facing immense hostility, from the arson of a kosher restaurant in Montreal to physical attacks on Jewish individuals in Spain and Miami, and in this climate, we desperately need examples of people who have successfully unlearned bigotry. Galliano has openly discussed his past errors in documentaries and interviews, actively listening to those he hurt and trying to construct a better path forward, which is precisely the outcome we should want for anyone who harbors prejudice. While this rational understanding does not magically erase my personal hurt, nor does it stop my heart from squeezing with a familiar pang of betrayal when I see modern icons like Zendaya or Kim Kardashian wearing his vintage gowns on the red carpet, I still plan to attend the exhibition at the Costume Institute. I will go not because I believe he is fully redeemed, but because I accept that he, like all of us, is beautifully and terribly broken. This recognition lies at the heart of the Jewish concept of tikkun olam—the belief that the Creator purposefully shattered the world so that humanity would have the sacred opportunity to gather the broken shards and rebuild them. The cracks will always remain visible, much like the ashes of the Dior dress I burned in my bathtub all those years ago, serving as a permanent reminder of a lost naivete, but the act of putting the pieces back together is where our true humanity resides.
