Why Galliano imploded: The fashion king is now in rehab fighting his obsession with his own Jewish roots
By Kathryn Knight
Last updated at 1:03 AM on 5th March 2011
Flamboyant: Disgraced former Dior creative director John Galliano
The Meadows rehabilitation facility in Arizona is a long way from the frenetic hothouse of Paris Fashion Week — and not just in distance. Located in the desert, 50 miles north-west of Phoenix, the rehab’s residents follow a strict timetable designed to help them conquer their addictions. The worldly concerns of the catwalk shows in the French capital have little place here.
Yet one character does link the two. For in the small hours of Thursday morning, a rather frail-looking, pale-faced figure with a pencil moustache is understood to have checked into The Meadows (previously host to Elton John and Donatella Versace) presumably to receive treatment for his problems.
His name is John Galliano, and he left in his wake panic-stricken preparations for yesterday’s Christian Dior womenswear autumn/winter catwalk show.
And panic would describe it. For no A-listers turned up to yesterday’s Dior show although American Vogue editor Anna Wintour and fashion guru Suzy Menkes made it to the front row, while anti-fascist campaigners demonstrated outside following Galliano’s alleged anti-Semitic rant last month.
Had the events of the past two weeks unfolded differently, he would have been rounding off the show with a theatrically costumed solo appearance to the wild applause of his audience. As the House of Dior’s creative director, Galliano’s flamboyant final flourish had become something of a signature.
But no more. For, as we now know, 50-year-old Galliano is no longer employed by the fashion-house, fired this week from his £4 million-a-year post at the label’s creative helm, following those alleged racist outbursts in a Paris bar, La Perle, on three separate occasions. He is accused on one of them of calling an innocent bystander a ‘dirty Jew’, before shouting ‘I love Hitler’ in another.
These were no casual allegations: this week, police confirmed that Galliano would face court proceedings in Paris on at least one claim of making racist insults. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to six months in jail.
In the meantime, quite aside from his humiliating dismissal, a gigantic question mark hangs over the future of Galliano’s other enterprises. For the designer also boasts a chain of more than 100 own-label international stores and a lucrative collaboration with High Street brand Diesel, for whom he designs a collection of children’s clothes.
It’s therefore hardly surprising that, prior to his flight to the U.S. earlier this week, Galliano was said to be — rather like his former employers — ‘beyond panic’.
According to one Paris-based British fashion source, he was ‘just sitting and waiting for everything he’s built up over the years to get washed away before his eyes. He knows he has been utterly foolish’.
That’s one word for it. There are several others: arrogant, imperious and downright nasty. But perhaps, also, deeply troubled.
Axed: John Galliano with lover Alexis Roche, left, and right with supermodel Kate Moss
For while Galliano’s career has imploded in the most spectacularly public and shaming way, those who know him well have long felt it was only a matter of time before the designer’s star was tarnished.
Despite cultivating a new clean-living image — only a month ago, Galliano told a British journalist that he was teetotal and cigarettes were his only vice — rumours have long raged that he had returned to the hedonistic behaviour of his early years in Eighties’ London.
This week, one Paris fashion source told the Mail Galliano had to be ‘rescued’ several times in recent months after evenings of wild drinking. Others spoke of him returning to the atelier where he works ‘frequently worse for wear’.
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Combined with what appears to be an increasing affection for cosmetic surgery, his behaviour was such that, even before recent events, Dior’s chief executive Sidney Toledano had repeatedly encouraged him to seek professional help.
‘Each time,’ the source says, ‘Galliano would either evade the subject or suggest a visit to a spa instead.’
Certainly, it seems that in the 15 years he has been at Dior, Galliano had become a rather cossetted figure. He had a driver, a bodyguard, two personal trainers and vast teams of assistants — all of which distanced him from the reality he swore he was grounded in.
‘He was very protected, very indulged, very isolated,’ a source says. ‘He had two, maybe three, people in his inner circle that he really engaged with, that’s all.’
'The king is gone': Galliano has checked into rehab as he fights his obsession with his own Jewish roots
Others say it was perfectly possible to work for him for a year and never meet him.
Moreover, alongside concerns over Galliano’s drinking, the talk in fashion circles was that Galliano had lost some of the flair that had elevated him to the very top of the profession. ‘In recent years there’s been a feeling that he had run out of ideas,’ one British fashion editor told the Mail.
But in fairness, much was required of him. Galliano personally oversaw 12 new collections a year — six for Dior, including haute couture, and six for his own label. In addition, he had to micro-manage everything from the label’s accessories to the layout of the stores.
‘The demands on him were immense,’ says one source. ‘And you must remember Galliano is a man of extremes, so it’s not altogether surprising he’s ended up behaving in a rather extreme way.’
Even so, few could have predicted the extraordinary manner in which he orchestrated his own downfall. As one leading fashion editor said this week: ‘You could lay any number of sins at Galliano’s door, but racism would not have been on the list.’
Anger: Doir model Natalie Portman who publicly slammed John Galliano after the videos emerged
Galliano, after all, is himself the product of two distinct cultural identities. One of three children — he has two sisters — he was born to a Gibraltan father, Juan, and a Spanish mother, Anita.
The family came to England in pursuit of work when Galliano was six, and settled in Streatham, South London, before moving to Dulwich. His parents later retired to Spain, where his father died in 2003.
A shy, somewhat diffident child who was raised a strict Roman Catholic, Galliano has often spoken of his struggle to fit in. Recalling his early days, he once admitted: ‘I don’t think people here understood where I was coming from.’
Anita, a flamenco teacher, would dress him in his smartest outfit even for a trip to the local shops. This, combined with his creative sensibilities, saw him frequently bullied at his London boys grammar school.
Academically average, he found his metier only when he attended City and East London College to study design, before going on to Central St Martins.
His talent was so immediately obvious that his graduate show was a sell-out, which was almost unheard of at the time. His entire collection was bought in a single day by a leading fashion buyer of the time.
On the back of his overnight success, Galliano set up a studio in London, but his talent was not matched by a head for business.
President of Chritsian Dior fashion house Sidney Toledano reads a statement before the start of the Christian Dior Spring/Summer 2012 ready-to-wear collection show
What’s more, he seemed intent on taking his enjoyment of London’s nightlife to extremes. The then notorious nightclub Taboo, described as being ‘seedier than the bottom of a bird’s cage’ (drugs and sexual licentiousness were the order of the day), was one of his favourite stomping grounds.
By 1990, he was bankrupt and, after his own London-based label failed to re-ignite his fortunes, he moved to Paris. For two years he lived on baked beans above his workshop, but he then found a most unlikely champion in Anna Wintour.
In 1993, Wintour threw her not inconsiderable clout behind him, introducing him to financial backers and finding him a venue for a hastily thrown-together catwalk show, modelled for free by Kate Moss, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell among others.
The show was declared a sensation — and a star was born. Two years later, Galliano was appointed creative director at Givenchy, the first British man to head a French couture house, before moving to Dior in 1997. The French were horrified, believing Galliano’s eccentric vision to be at odds with the classical background of the house.
Yet he won them over with his flamboyant, meticulously researched collections, and there is no arguing with the figures: under Galliano’s creative tutelage, the value of Dior’s empire burgeoned to nearly £600 million.
In the process, Galliano became a familiar figure on the streets of Le Marais, an area of Paris popular with gays and also — ironically enough — the city’s Jewish community.
It was no secret that Galliano shared his Paris home with his long-term boyfriend Alexis Roche, a style consultant.
What is less well known is that — according to a confidant of his, whom the Mail talked to this week — the designer loved to emphasise his own Jewish ancestry.
Perched in La Perle, mojito (his preferred cocktail) in hand, Galliano would tell anyone who listened about the melting pot of his heritage.
He always insisted he had Jewish blood from the Sephardi Jews who came from Spain and Portugal in the 19th century.
Galliano in 2001 - the British designer receives a Commander of the British Empire award from the Queen at Buckingham Palace
‘Johnny is obsessed with the idea of being descended from Jews,’ the confidant, who often drank with him at La Perle, reports. ‘He was brought up a Catholic, but has always been aware of the influence Jews have had on his life.
‘Johnny was particularly fascinated by the fact that couture in Paris was traditionally a Jewish industry.’
He added that, when sober, Galliano spoke authoritatively about the Holocaust, and particularly about the fact that thousands who worked in the fashion business in Paris were murdered by the Nazis.
‘Johnny knows that Paris designers were exterminated systematically by the Nazis in living memory. To me, the freaky language in a Paris bar was just nonsense — an attempt to shock strangers in bars.
‘He just didn’t want to present them with the image they expected — he wanted to surprise. He does this on the catwalk, so why not in a bar?’
Galliano has attempted to fightback, apologising for the video and said he is not responsible for any other racist abuse
His supporters are insisting he is not anti-Semitic but simply attention-seeking. However, their protestations are doing little to assuage the anger of his former employer; Dior hastily severed links with its star designer, and its high-profile ‘face’ Natalie Portman spoke of her ‘shock and disgust’ at his behaviour.
Those who have spoken out in his defence include socialite Daphne Guinness, who has said that his behaviour is completely out of character.
‘He has always been pretty shy,’ she says. ‘It makes me terribly worried for him. He has had a tough couple of years.’
Her sentiments were echoed by Marie-Pierre Lannelongue, fashion editor of online news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur and also a friend. ‘Everyone who knows him can tell you he is a completely calm character,’ she says.
Nonetheless, according to Marcellous L. Jones, editor-in-chief of fashion web magazine TheFashionInsider.com, the talk backstage at Paris Fashion Week has centred on rumoured plots by Dior to rid itself of Galliano.
‘From the very first day of Fashion Week, many editors have been saying that Dior wanted to get rid of him and that a plot like this would save it from having to pay him a reported £17 million,’ he says. ‘These are actually the things that people are saying right now.’
Rather notable by their seeming failure to defend Galliano, however, are long-term celebrity friends, including Kylie Minogue and Kate Moss — whose wedding dress Galliano is meant to be designing.
Naomi Campbell is also uncharacteristically quiet, although it has been said that it was at the urging of Campbell and Moss that the designer was persuaded to enter rehab at all.
Galliano has attempted to launch his own fightback, apologising for the video footage, but he has emphatically denied that he has been responsible for any other racist abuse in La Perle.
In what is being seen as a desperate damage limitation exercise, he has launched a counter civil claim for defamation against Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, the couple who claimed he ranted abuse at them in La Perle last week.
Given the evidence, it is hard to imagine Galliano ever clawing back his reputation, although he is rumoured to have employed a firm of solicitors to fight his dismissal by Dior.
In the meantime, the shows must go on. For as well as the Dior womenswear show, a spokesman for Galliano insisted that the show of his own collection, scheduled for tomorrow, would proceed as planned.
One can’t help but think that if it does go ahead, it will prove to be something of a swansong.
Asked, years ago, how he would like to be remembered, John Galliano replied that he would like it to be ‘as a romantic’.
As things stand, that’s the last word likely to spring to mind.
Additional reporting by Peter Allen in Paris.
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Saturday 5 March 2011
John Galliano in rehab fighting his obsession with his own Jewish routes | Mail Online
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