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It’s hard to light a dress on fire without triggering fire alarms, but I did it in 2011.
First I knocked down the smoke detector in my tiny apartment with a Swiffer. Then I doused the dress — a Christian Dior cotton mini by John Galliano that I’d scrounged for $65 at Goodwill — with lighter fluid in my bathtub. Then I wept.
I was burning the dress because I’d been a sucker.
Like everyone else who worked in fashion, I believed John Galliano was the GOAT — the Jalen Brunson of runway shows. He turned clothes into art and his pieces fit every body, even the not-so-skinny ones, with astonishing precision.
Fashion people worshipped him the way ESPN worshipped Tom Brady.
But the reverence stopped in February 2011, when Galliano was filmed making deranged racist comments about a “f***ing Asian bastard” and a “f***ing ugly Jewish bitch” in a Parisian cafe.
The designer was seethingly precise about his admiration for Hitler’s killing machine, and for the way my lost relatives were thrown into furnaces, some while still alive.
After all, I am proudly one of those “f***ing ugly Jewish bitches.”
That’s why I raged when news broke on Friday evening — just before Shabbat, in fact — that John Galliano, now 65, would be the subject of the upcoming Met Gala exhibition.
The most-watched red carpet in the world, the Met Gala pulls in nearly 1.7 billion views online. It counts up to 1.5 million visitors for every exhibit. And next May, it will elevate Galliano to living god status, at least in the fashion world.
This is a man who once proclaimed my whole family — and millions like us — should die.
My fashion industry group chat fumed, too. “Insulting,” wrote a Ralph Lauren VIP who hosted me for Passover. “Bad enough that Fashion Week is already during Rosh Hashana,” added an editor who often comes over for Shabbat. And the most common sentiment: “Right NOW?”
Indeed, the timing of this show is bunk.
Antisemitic incidents now make up over 56% of reported New York hate crimes, per a recent NYPD release. It’s an 8.5% rise since last year. Just last month, a Jewish man was stabbed near Galliano’s future archive hall at the Met.
Moms are sending kids to school in baseball caps instead of yarmulkes. Synagogues that were once easy community hubs now have double-gated doors. And online, chaos-agent bots and demented keyboard warriors alike stoke rumors of “Hebraic supremacy” while blaming Jews worldwide for the horrific Israeli-Palestinian war.
The timing of the Met Gala announcement was also, as the kids say, suss. Nobody releases big news on a weekend unless it’s shrouded in shame, like a celebrity divorce or a soggy earnings report.
And by nature of a Friday night news blast, many observant Jews in the fashion world — people like Dior model Karlie Kloss and storied editor Suzy Menkes — couldn’t see it at all.
That’s partly why it took me so long to react to this news. I was literally at my childhood synagogue when it broke.
Ironically, this is the same synagogue where I was shown, perhaps a little too early, photos of Jewish children who’d been dumped into mass graves by the Nazis.
But it is also the synagogue where I was taught by visiting Holocaust survivors that holding onto rage — even when deeply justified — punishes you more than your enemy.
Where I read works by old-school scholars like Maimondides and new-school groups like T’ruah Rabbis that argue great harms give us the opportunity to feel rage and fear, and then the gift of letting it go. And that a lot of great artists — including Jews like Woody Allen — were masters and also, often, monsters.
That’s why five days after the Costume Institute released its big Galliano news, I think an exhibit of the designer’s work is actually a fine idea.
Here’s why:
First, Galliano appears to have done real work in the fifteen years since his vile explosion. After Dior, he went to rehab, then met privately with Jewish leaders, including former CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg — the daughter of a Holocaust survivor — and former ADL president Abraham Foxman.
Sources say he still meets with Jewish leaders and a therapist. That’s hard, and it’s worth acknowledging.
Second, the clothes are extraordinary. It would be easy to write them off as overrated. It would also be wrong.
Galliano’s astonishing designs for Christian Dior and later for the couture house Maison Margiela belong in a museum, the same way Roald Dahl’s books belong in a library and Thomas Jefferson’s philosophies belong on a syllabus. They were made by troubled, troubling people who were also remarkable creators. Sometimes the work is the work.
Third — and I know this will sound strange — Jewish tradition is actually on Galliano’s side here.
Again and again, our scripture calls us to gaze at our former enemy and search for shared humanity. That doesn’t mean we should forget our past transgressions — as the indelible Off-Broadway play Birthright reminds its audience every night, a word that is vital to our faith is “remember.”
But once real accountability happens, our texts are clear that for the sake of the world (and our own mental health), we have to move on.
It isn’t easy. It isn’t fun. It lacks the satisfaction of a throbbing uppercut to the jaw. But Jewish philosophy asks for a deeper reckoning — a willingness to let anger, fear, curiosity and even awe exist in the exact same moment. This feels impossible. That is why it’s part of our faith.
Furthermore, let’s be real:
Things are not great for Jewish communities worldwide right now. Just this week, a kosher restaurant in Montreal was burned down. A swastika was drawn on a sculpture park in Spain. In Miami, a Jewish man in a kippah was stabbed at a Starbucks by a madwoman growling “I hate them.”
Unless proven otherwise, John Galliano is setting a real example for how to recognize and correct hateful behavior. He’s talking in documentaries and on TV shows about his errors. He’s meeting with Jewish leaders and fashion community members about a way forward. He’s listening. He’s trying. This is exactly what we want. This work, too, is the work.
I wish this negated my personal fury and deep disappointment in John Galliano’s past. So far, no dice. I still feel stung when Kim Kardashian and Zendaya wear Galliano’s designs on the red carpet. When Emily Blunt sported a giant hoodie blaring a vintage “GALLIANO” logo in The Devil Wears Prada sequel, I had an involuntary spasm. The body keeps score. Mine does it with logos.
But I still plan to see Galliano’s show at the Costume Institute, not because I think he’s now redeemed, but because I know he isn’t. Judaism itself says we are all broken — him, me, everybody. It is our central tenet of tikkun olam, a belief that God smashed the world on purpose, creating an opportunity for us to come together and rebuild it. There will still be cracks. The cracks are the point.
And the Galliano dresses in the show will be gasp-worthy.
As for my old Galliano dress, I still don’t regret setting it on fire and watching it burn away, along with my naivete that just because some created a beautiful world, it meant they always knew how to live in one.
Some things just can’t be saved.
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