“High & Low: John Galliano,” the feature-length documentary about the former Dior designer’s fall after a drunken anti-Semitic rampage in a Paris bar in 2011 and his long climb back up, is interesting for several reasons. It’s a chance to hear from Mr. Galliano himself about his struggles, for example, and look back at the fashion world of the 1990s. But just as impressive are the number of musings he’s produced meditating on transgressions, repentance and, apparently, Mr. Galliano’s current state of remission.
Indeed, the film’s greatest significance may have less to do with the story it tells than with what it appears to represent: the official end of Mr. Galliano’s time in the desert. It serves as code for a period that began with his dismissal from Dior and his subsequent conviction for hate crimes and has spanned a prolonged period of atonement and a new job at Maison Margiela, where Mr. Galliano’s work is once again celebrated.
As such, it also reflects a shift from the era of outrage, particularly in fashion. “It seems that, in the end, everyone is allowed to come back,” said Achim Berg, former head of McKinsey & Company’s global apparel, fashion and luxury group.
Although people in other industries have been canceled and returned to public life – Aziz Ansari and Louis CK come to mind – fashion is unique in the way it uses people to humanize brands, meaning their actions are connected inherently with the fortunes of a much larger company, as are their creations.
Perhaps the only equivalent is the restaurant world, although designers and celebrities generally have higher name recognition than even the most famous chefs, and the financial impact is significantly greater. As a result, it is possible in this case, as with many trends, whether in fashion or culture. Or conversely.
After all, beyond Mr. Galliano, a short list of the once-debauched-now-resurgent includes:
Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, who was widely panned and lost his corporate deals after his own racist and anti-Semitic remarks in 2022. Last month, however, Ye appeared front row at the Marni show and is currently featured in Y/Project’s 10th anniversary lookbook, alongside Charli XCX and Tyga. Adidas, despite ending its official relationship with him, continues to promote and sell Yeezy stock.
Balenciaga, which came under fire on social media in 2022 after a poorly reviewed holiday ad campaign, prompted some to claim the brand promoted child pornography. Now not only does it have the seal of approval of brand ambassadors Kim Kardashian (a former fan of the brand who distanced herself after the controversy but has very publicly returned to the fold), Nicole Kidman and Michelle Yeoh, but has found new momentum after a highly praised recent show, which shrugged off the atonement’s hair for a high-octane statement.
Dolce & Gabbana, which suffered a fall in 2018 when it appeared to offend all of China with an ad campaign that peddled racial stereotypes and was preceded by numerous insults about size and sexual orientation. In 2022, the brand not only appeared to be sponsoring an entire Kardashian wedding but also collaborated with Kim, and has recently been ubiquitous on the red carpet. Both Usher and Alicia Keys wore the brand for their appearance at the Super Bowl, which they attended 123.7 million viewers.
Marchesa, which was founded by Georgina Chapman, the ex-wife of Harvey Weinstein, went quiet soon after Mr Weinstein’s wrongdoings were revealed, but has once again turned into an awards show for the likes of Hannah Waddingham and Padma. Lakshmi.
Alexander Wang, who was accused of sexual harassment in 2021, subsequently settled a lawsuit and held a show last year attended by the great and the good of New York and Los Angeles.
Theories of Relativity
It’s easy to dismiss fashion’s stability as a product of its ephemerality—this is, after all, an industry built on promoting change almost every four months—but something more complex and meaningful may be going on.
“I think it’s directly related to the industry’s current obsession with discretion and decorum — the non-confrontational nature and risk aversion,” said Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, the stylist and activist, noting fashion’s tendency to play it safe. in the face of an uncertain economic and political climate — to return to the familiar (white male designers with the same facial hair, for example), even if the familiar has some skeletons in its closet.
Mr Berg said perhaps it was just a matter of proportion. There are so many tensions in the world right now, with so many huge implications, that everything else seems less serious in comparison. Also, she said, “After the last US election, all the parameters of what is and isn’t acceptable have changed” — and not just in fashion. In his view, the cancellation culture itself may have been a phenomenon of the Covid era.
“We may be experiencing a degree of outrage,” said Susan Scaffidi, the founder of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham University. “With waves of scandal, the first one is the worst, but every apology we collectively accept lessens the drama of the next incident.”
This is especially true when the acts being apologized for vary so widely, from sexual assault to hate crimes to racial slurs to guilt by association — and from actual crimes that can and sometimes are prosecuted in court to crimes in the court of public opinion.
And yet, as Julie Zerbo, founder of the website The Fashion Law, pointed out, the details and severity of the offense may vary, but the stories are broadly the same. They start with an online outcry, followed by an apology, a retreat to “focus on the project” (or some such), a fallow period, and then a re-emergence, chastened but accepted. This pattern has become so predictable, it’s almost spontaneous. And it encourages the tendency to see all cases as the same, to confuse the more serious with the less serious.
Especially since transgressions seem less shocking the more they recede in the mirror or the more they are replaced by new ones. In a world of reduced attention spans, people can only pay attention to so many wrongdoings at once.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the founders of Diet Prada, the fashion-following Instagram account made famous for its willingness to plead wrongdoing, declined to comment for this article and turned to broader fashion reporting.
Crime and punishment
Is there anything unforgivable? “For those who do not recover their former status – Anand Jon and Harvey Weinstein come to mind – a key reason is that their offenses are so serious that the justice system intervenes,” Ms Scafidis said.
It’s also worth noting that, as Ms. Zerbo said, what happens in the echo chamber of, say, fashion X and what the global consumer knows may be different. Balenciaga never got the same hit in Asia as it did in the West. And while celebrities were Dolce & Gabbana fans for a few months after the China boom, they soon showed up when red carpets (and free trips to Italy for the couture extravaganza) beckoned.
“None of these people were ever cancelled,” Ms Karefa-Johnson said. They just stepped out of the limelight. “Eventually enough time passes that the invalids can be invalidated – through their work, or their lingering ‘genius,’ or their money-making potential, or their social capital that was never fully discounted,” he said.
For Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor who was instrumental in the return of at least three of the canceled designers – Mr. Galliano, whose return to fashion helped orchestrate; Ms. Chapman, whom she featured in Vogue in 2018. and Balenciaga’s Demna, whose mea culpa posted early last year – this is more of a course correction after a reversion to mob mentality.
“To me the issue is not only forgiveness, but also the seriousness with which we judge people in the first place,” he wrote in an email. “I feel very strongly that our culture has begun to move too quickly towards condemnation – towards a sense of certainty that particular offenses or wrongs are unforgivable. The truth is, we rarely know the full story, and we are all fallible.”
While Ms. Wintour acknowledged that there was conduct that was inexcusable, she declined to specify what would qualify as such, but possibly cases like those cited by Ms. Scafidi, which involve a crime. In general, he said, “we need to show more compassion, understanding and forgiveness, not less.”
Can you forgive but not forget?
The problem is how does one measure repentance? No one can look into another’s soul. Is it in money earmarked for the injured party in perpetuity? In the play itself? Public shaming requires public agreement about what constitutes atonement and how it can or should be assessed, and this is a much more difficult issue to address. Easier, really, to shrug and move on.
“Speaking for myself, I have not forgiven Dolce & Gabbana,” Ms Karefa-Johnson said. He has refused to shoot the brand’s clothes for the past five years, in part because he found the public apology unconvincing. “For me, there is a very clear path to redemption. It looks a lot like financial compensation”
The point, Ms Scafidis said, is this: “At the end of the day, consumers make fashion choices by looking in the mirror, not the designer behind it. It can be difficult to move away from a flattering look to support an invisible principle.” And where consumers and their wallets go, companies follow. To a certain extent, it has always been this way.
“The key text for a designer’s public forgiveness may be post-World War II Chanel,” Ms. Scafidis continued, referring to the brand’s continued global embrace as a paragon of chic despite Coco Chanel’s role as a Nazi collaborator. . is now being told on screen in the fantastic Apple TV+ series “The New Look”.
“With every biography or dramatization that reminds us of her Nazi associations,” Ms Scafidis said, “the price of the 2.55 bag seems to go a little higher.” He wasn’t talking about money.