The former Dior creative director's racist rant ended his career – and the age of the designer as untouchable genius
From 1996 onwards John Galliano played the role of the flamboyant fashion designer with some enthusiasm. Pictures of him taking a lap of honour down the catwalk dressed as a matador, an astronaut or a sailor were the visual punctuation marks of his reign as creative director at French super-brand Dior. To most who didn't care for the fashion industry, this image of the design maverick, responsible for the fantastical feather and tulle creations of haute couture, was what this indulgent world was all about.
But in February 2011, when evidence of Galliano's antisemitic rant went viral, the cliche of the whimsical mad-scientist designer was shattered. In its place came a rather more gruesome cliche – that of a drunk racist. In 45 seconds of grainy mobile phone footage Galliano's career came to an abrupt halt, and with it the curtain fell on the idea of the untouchable genius.
At first the industry didn't know how to react. Many were slow to believe that a designer of such talent could be anything as odious as a pro-Nazi. There were mutterings that his addictions had got the better of him, that the pressures of the job had hurt him mentally and that his bosses at Dior hadn't done enough to protect him. This first sympathetic reaction proved that the industry was in thrall to the idea of the designer as rock star.
At the time Karl Lagerfeld of Chanel was reportedly furious with Galliano for giving licence to the negative stereotypes that many detractors have about fashion. "This image is around the world. It's a horrible image of fashion because they think that every designer and everything in fashion is like this," he said. Perhaps as a designer who has done much himself to promote the idea of the creative genius, with his carefully constructed monochrome image and his commitment to excess (albeit of the less offensive variety), Lagerfeld too was resistant to the facade cracking.
But by the time Paris fashion week closed in early March, the incontrovertible evidence and the TV cameras outside the Dior show at the Musée Rodin got to even the most ostrich-like in the industry. The idea that a designer could behave as he liked was no longer sustainable.
The Galliano scandal was not the first time that the dark side of fashion was revealed. When Alexander McQueen killed himself last year, the industry began talking about the commercial pressures of the job. The question was raised as to whether one figurehead, especially one with an artistic temperament (yes, there go the stereotypes again), could possibly cope with creating up to 16 collections a year, promoting the brand and overseeing countless perfume launches.
Neither was it the first time that the industry had known one of its leading lights succumb to addictions. Marc Jacobs, creative director at Louis Vuitton and head of two of his own labels (an incidentally the man rumoured to be replacing Galliano at Dior for much of the year), has spent well-documented time in rehab.
Galliano wasn't the only designer not to take a bow at the end of his catwalk show during that week in Paris. Christophe Decarnin, who with the haute rock look he pushed at Balmain was just about the hottest name in fashion in 2009, was missing from his show. Label spokesmen cited "doctor's orders" as the reason for his absence. By April, Decarnin had quietly left the label.
But the Galliano affair was a game changer. It wasn't just about the addictions for once, although they undoubtedly played a part in the incident – in an interview just weeks before he joked that he has mastered all his vices, "well, apart from crack and heroin and cocaine". This time the crime was grim and there was no easy response for an industry that tends to gloss over difficult issues. By the time he appeared in a French courtroom, barechested, wearing a scarf and a wide-brimmed fedora, the image of Galliano the disgraced designer had taken over.
Whether he will be accepted again in fashion remains uncertain. He was reportedly given a standing ovation for Kate Moss's Gatsby-esque wedding dress during a party attended by industry leaders and you don't have to look far to find people still willing to support the man and his talent. But what is clear is that after March 2011 fashion's landscape looks quietly different. There are several designers at the top who seem to think of it as a job rather than a heroic lifestyle mission – Pheobe Philo of Céline, Sarah Burton at McQueen and Stella McCartney to name a few. What's more, the apparent difficulty in securing a replacement for Galliano at Dior (the position remains vacant nine months on) and indeed the label's apparent hesitation to rush into an appointment, suggests that the days of the indulged designer, encouraged to run free with feathers and whimsy, are long gone.