From Cancel to Can Sell
- Jayden Cohen-Boyce
- Feb 16, 2025
- 3 min read
John Galliano, renowned fashion designer from the 90s into the 2000s, was seen as the best designer from his era of fashion. He created beautiful silhouettes across the many labels he designed for over his tenure in fashion. His designs looked at styles of the past and reworked and reimagined them for, what were, present day clients. However, there are several times throughout his career where he used cultural markers in his collections, without credit and intercultural participation.
In his Spring 2003 collection, Galliano had Indian sari-inspired ensembles on the runway he called "Bollywood/Holi". Models were also painted in a powder that would be thrown at an Indian Festival. In its acknowledgment by fashion journalists at the time, it was said to be a celebration of color. Galliano cites his inspiration as Leigh Bowery, who was an early 80s London club icon. Proceeding to say that the competitive dressing at the time was taken to bizarre heights. This look into a culture derived from Indian garments and aesthetics in this collection was reduced to being called "performance art". Not to say performance art isn't an important genre in art, I just don't find it appropriate for someone to use something of cultural significance so callously, then let it be merely acknowledged as performance art. Especially when we can't name an Indian designer that had the reach and success that Galliano himself had at this same time.
Galliano is able to play and toss fabric across a body without regard, reverence or even respect for the culture it derived from. Then to see that it wasn't even engaged earnestly. It was derived from London club attendees, appropriating these same aesthetics to establish social hierarchies within groups Indian members of the fashion society in London, likely did not have access to. Especially not in the same capacity. He then can go onto make a whole new concept the following season, leaving this half-baked cultural exchange behind him. Cultural colonization isn't just the taking and adoption of one's culture, but also the watering down of it. Then designers who are Indian, when expressing experiences relevant to them that may share sentiment with what Galliano created, are often looked at as copy cats, when only one is the truly authentic version.
I think it is important to note that Galliano also was "cancelled" in 2011 after a video of him surfaced, where he was spewing racist and anti-semetic slurs and "opinions", during a drunken rant. He was then outcast and was seen by the general public, that one revered him, as a racist, anti-semite. This view stuck until his 2024 artisanal collection for the house Maison Margiela. He now has re-entered a darling status that questions accountability in the fashion industry and other industries alike.
However, the reason I find this important to share is that, I don't believe the person who, during a drunken rant, spews racist remarks, will engage properly with cultures he puts on his runway shows. And moving forward with his contributions to fashion, I think it would be more than foolish to not side eye and double take at him now. Accountability and reintegration is possible but only when there has been acknowledgement of harm, and action to do right by those you have wrong. Something that I can't say we have seen from him.
For further research, you should check out these sites. I think it helps put into perspective that this wasn't Galliano's only time appropriating culture, and that fashion has had an issue of this that is greater than any one individual designer. The cultural colonization of a singular culture, says a lot about the ability and history of colonization as global practice for domination and control.
How Cultural Appropriation Became a Hot-button Issue for Fashion
John Galliano shows the cancelled can be uncancelled
Also make sure you check out these blogs for more cultural commentary, especially this week on Cultural Appropriation versus Appreciation.
love love LOVE! This is such a read. I’m all for calling out designers and their toxic behavior, the disrespect in the name of artistry is completely unhinged.
And thank you so much for recommending me!