China reacts: ‘Pirate Grandpa’ John Galliano Met Gala 2027

What happened On July 31, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute announced that its spring 2027 exhibition, “John Galliano: Horizons,” will examine the British designer’s four-decade career alongside the antisemitic, racist and anti-Asian conduct that ended his tenure at Christian Dior. The show makes Galliano the subject of the Met Gala on May 3, 2027, and will run at The Met Fifth Avenue from May 9, 2027 to January 9, 2028. Galliano is only the third living designer to be given a solo Costume Institute show, after Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Comme des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo in 2017. It is also the first major museum exhibition devoted to his work, according to the Met. The Costume Institute show also sets the Met Gala theme, which dictates the dress code, the red carpet and the brand tie-ups that come with it. Neither the dress code nor the celebrity co-chairs have been announced. With the exhibition open until January 2028, the commercial tail runs well past gala night. Organized by Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Costume Institute, the show draws on the Met’s own Galliano holdings — the largest collection of its kind in the world, according to the museum. It spans his 1984 Central Saint Martins graduation collection, his eponymous label, his tenures at Givenchy and Christian Dior, and his years at Maison Margiela, closing with the critically acclaimed Spring/Summer 2024 collection. Garments, accessories, sketches, toiles and research books will trace how he built collections out of history, geography, art and performance. The announcement has drawn criticism. The Met describes Galliano’s conduct in 2010 and 2011 as antisemitic, racist and anti-Asian. It cost him both the creative directorship of Christian Dior and his own label, and a Paris court convicted him of public insults based on race, religion, ethnicity or origin. The exhibition’s opening gallery, “Bearings,” will address the episode directly, alongside his subsequent treatment for substance addiction and his later public acknowledgment of what he did. He returned to fashion at Maison Margiela in 2014, where a run of critically acclaimed collections gradually restored his standing before he left the house in December 2024. Anna Wintour, Vogue’s global editorial director and Condé Nast’s global chief content officer, defended the choice. “He’s a great designer and his career isn’t defined by a moment — something that he will live with for the rest of his life,” she told “British Vogue.” “The exhibition won’t shy away from any of the darkness in John’s past. It’s part of what has shaped him. The show will take in the full arc of his career and grapple with all of it.” The Jing Take The Met has taken the art-versus-artist question and made it the exhibition’s opening argument rather than its subtext — a reassessment made possible by the critical success of Galliano’s final collections at Margiela. What makes the 2027 show unusual for this market is that the conduct the museum plans to confront was, in part, anti-Asian, and the audience delighted by the announcement is in China. Beyond the reassessment, the show signals that major museums now see confronting a designer’s conduct as part of the curatorial job rather than a reason to avoid the subject. On Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Discussion there has focused far less on Galliano’s past than on the prospect of his designs dominating the 2027 red carpet. As of August 4, his hashtag had drawn more than 25.7 million views on the platform, while his Chinese nickname, “Pirate Grandpa” (海盗爷), had passed 150 million. Many users have pointed to what the show means commercially for Dior, whose Galliano-era archive stands to draw renewed attention around the gala. A second recurring thread concerns Galliano’s long relationship with Wintour. She championed him throughout his early career and is widely credited with introducing him to LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault, opening the way to Givenchy and then Christian Dior. After his 2011 dismissal, she remained among the industry’s most visible advocates for his return, backing him in the years before Maison Margiela. China’s enthusiasm also rests on a longer connection. Galliano has credited a three-week trip through Asia in 2002 — taking in China, Japan and Tibet — as a turning point in his work. It shaped his spring 2003 Dior haute couture collection, and, as he later recounted in the catalogue for the Met’s 2015 exhibition “China: Through the Looking Glass,” introduced him to meditation, which became central to his process. That history has built him a devoted following in one of luxury’s most important markets. Whether it survives contact with “Bearings” — the gallery where the Met will set out, in its own words, the anti-Asian conduct that the Xiaohongshu conversation has so far passed over — is the question the 2027 show leaves open in China. The Jing Take reports on a piece of the leading news and presents our editorial team’s analysis of the key implications for the luxury industry. In the recurring column, we analyze everything from product drops and mergers to heated debate sprouting on Chinese social media.

China reacts: ‘Pirate Grandpa’ John Galliano Met Gala 2027

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China reacts: ‘Pirate Grandpa’ John Galliano Met Gala 2027

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag