A Fashion Queen's Luxury Splendor Can't Quite Conceal Her Moral Squalor
John Galliano and Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour spent nearly four decades reigning over Vogue magazine. She was chair of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute and its glitzy gala. Wintour is an inspiration for the imperious fashion editor in The Devil Wears Prada. With her trademark bob hairdo, sunglasses, and snotty English accent, Wintour has been the style influence who crowns the influencers.
But her honking blunder in choosing designer John Galliano for a solo show has sullied her legacy. Even worse, it was set to open alongside the institute's fundraising red-carpet blowout. Galliano is known for his antisemitic and anti-Asian tirades. France convicted him of a hate-speech crime, and several luxury brands summarily dropped him.
Some Vogue insiders explain that the 76-year-old Wintour suffers from being out of step with the next generation, that she's not current on social media. Others, myself included, believe she is out of step with decency and judgment.
Granted, the fashion business obsesses on outward appearances. That's its business. But balance sheets for companies making chemicals and ball bearings include a line called "goodwill." It's for intangible assets that make people feel good about the brand.
One must suffer a moral deficiency to celebrate a guy who shouts, "I love Hitler" in public places. Those words are vulgar and offensive everywhere, but especially so at institutions with many Jewish patrons and in an industry with a large Jewish presence.
It makes no difference that Galliano is considered one of the designer greats. Or that he often comes off as just a weirdo with his pirate mustache and frozen grimace. Or that he claims to have been under the influence of some inebriant during his outbursts. Or that he issued an apology for "the hurt I caused to the Jewish and Asian communities."
That level of sympathy was lacking in Wintour. After Galliano pulled out from the Met show, she issued a statement that "John's 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."
Wintour's touting of bigots because they're clever with clothes is not limited to this individual. It was found that Rama Duwaji, the fashion-forward wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, had provided crude antisemitic illustrations for a book. Her earlier social media posts also trafficked in the N-word and made anti-gay slurs.
But Wintour gushed over the girl's style in the May issue of Vogue: "I'm full of admiration for New York City's new first lady because she looks so cool and wears a lot of vintage" and so forth.
We understand that the rag trade is not overly invested in its players' moral fiber. And there are artists whose views are repugnant, but if they're especially good at the craft, their reputation can be largely restored with the passage of a few decades.
During World War II, Coco Chanel had ties to Nazi officials for whom she did spying. She tried to use the Nazi anti-Jewish property laws to seize control of the perfume business from her Jewish partners. We're talking about Chanel No. 5.
In 1954, at age 70, Chanel regrouped with a successful comeback fashion collection. American women responded eagerly to Coco's new collection. The French were less enthusiastic.
Ask us again about Galliano in 2035.
Wintour offers a reminder that an arbiter of fashion taste and style can harbor the conscience of a slob. Criticize the response to Galliano as shaming, if you must. But some things are shameful.
The Met Gala, long an Olympics of vulgar exhibitionism, does raise money for a good cause. The Galliano affair was bad for the museum and bad for fashion as a culture.
Meanwhile, goodbye Anna Wintour.
Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.
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