He may be one of the most influential couturiers in the world but recent events suggest Christian Dior’s head designer John Galliano is not aware that racism is never in fashion [sorry, but that sentence wrote itself]. After firmly denying all allegations connected to his reported anti-semitic verbal assault as recently as yesterday, a videotape has emerged featuring a man who appears to be John Galliano saying, “I love Hitler,” and, “People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed.”
Maybe that explains his mustache…
Italian Vogue editor Franca Sozzani has come to the designer’s defense saying: “An explosion was more than probable when you add together the amount of alcohol Galliano had consumed and the provocations of the people speaking to him.
Of course we condemn the extremely seriously racist content of what he said… We don’t want to go on an obsessive search for hidden motives, but perhaps behind this event are just some parvenus of journalistic scandal who, in our opinion, were waiting to have three minutes of video to sell to someone for a good deal more than 30 pieces of silver.”
It will be interesting to see who else within the fashion industry will defend the designer’s words. As Sozzani said, in the video footage it does seem as though the off-camera targets of his vitriol are laughing at Galliano, but there’s a few things that you just do not say at any time ever. “I love Hitler” is one of those things.
