Galliano: forgive and forget?

John Galliano modelling. Google images

I have been thinking a lot about John Galliano, after I was given a link to an interview he gave to Ingrid Sischy for Vanity Fair, over a year ago. It was an interesting read, not least because it highlighted one of the endemic problems of the fashion industry, how it saps the energy of  the creatives that are involved in it, with its imperative to produce, produce, produce. Galliano's meltdown, following an alcohol and drug binge, went viral in 2011, when he hurled anti-semitic insults in a Parisian boite. At that moment he crossed a line and he had to go, there could be no further tolerance of his drug and alcohol fuelled idiosyncratic behaviour. So he relinquished his position as head of the Maison Dior. He  had no choice.
But the fashion industry needs talents like Galliano's and he seems to be sufficiently contrite and remorseful to warrant him a second chance. After all, was Kate Moss not called back to model following her cocaine snorting incident? Miss Moss is an iconic model - here it is, the dreaded little word I discussed in an earlier post. And Mr Galliano is an iconic designer. So why should he not  do what he is best at?
Drugs and alcohol can play havoc with your ability to control your thoughts and behaviour. I have often wondered whether things would have been different if the insults hurled by Galliano had not been videoed and gone viral. In hindsight it is a good thing the video was seen by so many people as it forced Galliano to take stock and do something about his addiction. And he has.

Galliano's Fall 2007 collection

Galliano is no ordinary designer. He has a great team but no collection of his goes without his personal input in conceiving the clothes and the way they are going to be presented. There are designers whose main ability is that of putting together a brand and market it, and designers who create the look from scratch, who are practitioners of the craft - an art really. They are the designers as practising artists. Think of Vivienne Westwood, Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen as opposed to, say, the Victoria Beckhams of the fashion industry.
Galliano has great originality and a vision. His shows were true spectacles, great performances, in which the clothes themselves were 'performed'. His sense of theatricality is supreme. The move of fashion shows into the realm of the spectacular  is very clear nowadays, we only have to think of the recent Paris Fashion Week and the show put on by Karl Lagerfeld.  Unlike Lagerfeld's, whose ironic take on feminism could be construed as trivialising,  Galliano's theatricality does not have a hint of the trivial or cheap.
So yes, I think Galliano should be given another chance. It is rumoured he might take up a position with Maison Martin Margiela. I hope it is true.