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\n\tEvery first week of May for the past 31 years, Vogue<\/a>\u2019<\/em>s Anna Wintour<\/a> has presided over the Costume Institute\u2019s annual exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the accompanying Met Gala<\/a>, the lavish, star-studded event that has become the fashion world\u2019s equivalent of the Oscars. Now, with the withdrawal<\/a> of the Costume Institute\u2019s latest honoree<\/a>, John Galliano<\/a>, over controversy surrounding past racist and antisemitic comments, and the canceling of the exhibit<\/a>, that hallowed 70-year-old tradition may be going on an embarrassing hiatus. (The Met, in a statement earlier this morning, said plans for a new exhibit and gala would be announced later.) <\/p>\n \n\tFor Wintour, who at 76 has outlasted generational rivals like Graydon Carter and Tina Brown and has amassed unparalleled power at Cond\u00e9 Nast \u2014 the publisher of Vogue <\/em>as well as titles like Vanity Fair, GQ <\/em>and The New Yorker \u2014 <\/em>the misstep may cause more than temporary embarrassment.<\/p>\n \n\tGalliano, the longtime creative head of both Dior and Margiela \u2014 now collaborating with Zara \u2014 announced the news himself on Instagram Monday morning: \u201cAfter much reflection and discussion with all those involved, I have decided, with great sadness, that it is best for the exhibition not to take place at this time. I do not want the debate surrounding me to place the Met in a difficult position or to distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute. I also recognize and respect that an exhibition my work would be painful for some.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThis is quite a break with fashion precedent. No Met honoree has ever bowed out before, nor has any pre-announced theme been canceled. (Only two honorees, Yves-Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo in 2017, were alive at the time of the exhibits devoted to their work; and Galliano was set to be the third living honoree.) <\/p>\n \n\tBut the Galliano choice was fraught<\/a> the minute it was announced this summer.<\/a> Despite his fashion genius, the notorious 2011 incident at a Paris \u2014 caught on a video, in which the visibly drunk designer slurred racist epithets to Jewish customers, declaring a fondness for Hitler and telling them their ancestors would be \u201cgassed\u201d \u2014 got him fired from Dior, making him an international persona non grata. <\/p>\n \n\tDespite apologies (a very public one in his 2024 doc High and Low: John Galliano<\/em>) and work with Jewish leaders over the years, the rise of antisemitism in the last decade has brought the unfortunate \u2014 and inebriated \u2014 moment to the forefront.<\/p>\n \n\tWintour said Monday in a statement in support<\/a> of Galliano as he headed for the exit: \u201cJohn\u2019s decision that the exhibition devoted to his work should not take place at this time is very courageous and a measure of the man he is. I believe this is the right decision, and both he and the Museum have my full support.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHow bad was the backlash? Among the voices decrying the Met\u2019s decision to lionize Galliano is New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has recently faced uproar over his vociferous criticism of Israel, which some have characterized as encouraging antisemitism. A spokesman for Mayor Mamdani last night shared the following statement with the New York Times<\/em>:<\/a> \u201cJohn Galliano\u2019s repeated use of antisemitic language is vile. The Mamdani administration recognizes that the Met\u2019s decision to honor him has caused pain and anger among many Jewish New Yorkers. The Met is an independent institution and its decisions \u2014 and how it responds to the many Jewish New Yorkers appalled by this choice \u2014 are ultimately its own. But independence does not mean insulation from criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIs Galliano to blame? Hardly. The designer simply accepted the honor from Wintour and Met Costume Institute chief curator Andrew Bolton, who\u2019d prepared for some backlash by working with Galliano to preempt the inevitable criticism. Wintour clearly knew the risks, but perhaps underestimated them. Nor did she seem to be sufficiently prepared for the populist backlash the Gala received<\/a> when she asked Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez Bezos to co-chair\/sponsor this year\u2019s Ball to the tune of $10 million. <\/p>\n \n\tNew York streets were plastered with posters calling for a boycott of the gala, castigating the couple over their conspicuous displays of wealth, their lavish Venice wedding, Amazon\u2019s $40 million Melania<\/em> doc currying favor to the Trump administration and accusing them of attempting to buy their way into fashion high society. Marie Antoinette was invoked in some Bezos headlines, referring to Wintour.<\/p>\n \n\tSo how will Wintour deal with this onslaught of negative press? Some New Yorkers believe this finally might be the moment the fashion world\u2019s ultimate survivor steps away from her near 40-year career at Cond\u00e9. \u201cShe\u2019s used to being called an \u2018ice queen,\u2019\u201d says one well-placed source in the high echelons of the New York fashion world. \u201cBut not to this level of bitter backlash.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every first week of May for the past 31 years, Vogue\u2019s Anna Wintour has presided over the Costume Institute\u2019s annual exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the accompanying Met Gala, the lavish, star-studded event that has become the fashion world\u2019s equivalent of the Oscars. Now, with the withdrawal of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1688,5394,5393],"class_list":["post-6244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fashion","tag-anna","tag-blame","tag-wintour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6246,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6244\/revisions\/6246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}