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Anti-Semitic UK Fashion Designer Returns to Industry

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Anti-Semitic British designer John Galliano is to restart his shattered career by taking over the creative direction of the fashion house Maison Martin Margiela, the label said on Monday

Anti-Semitic British designer John Galliano is to restart his shattered career by taking over the creative direction of the fashion house Maison Martin Margiela, the label said on Monday, three years after he was sacked by Dior following a drunken anti-Semitic tirade in a Paris bar.

Galliano (53) spent nearly 15 years at Dior before being canned for spouting Jew hatred at people in a bar in Paris’s Jewish quarter, and was rarely seen since being convicted for making public anti-Semitic comments in September 2011, reports AFP.

The Paris criminal court found him guilty on two occasions in February 2011 and October 2010. In one incident caught on film, Galliano said “I love Hitler,” as well as “people like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be (expletive) gassed.”

Although he faced a maximum of six months in jail for the charges, Galliano received a far lower sentence with suspended fines totalling 6,000 euros ($8,400) after the court accepted he was sorry for his actions, which he blamed on drink and drugs.

“Margiela is ready for a new charismatic, creative soul,” Renzo Rosso, whose OTB group controls the house, told industry journal Women’s Wear Daily. “John Galliano is one of the greatest undisputed talents of all time – a unique exceptional couturier for a maison (house) that has always challenged and innovated the world of fashion.”

“I look forward to his return to create that fashion dream that only he can create,” added Rosso. The journal said Galliano is to take over all lines at Margiela including couture and both women’s and men’s ready-to-wear collections.

Prior to the announcement Rosso had denied reports that Galliano would return to the industry with his company. In September, he was quoted in Women’s Wear Daily “Who wouldn’t like to work with him? If he ever got back his name, I would be the first to produce his collections.”

After his 2011 anti-Semitic outburst Galliano was silent for two years until finally giving an interview to Vanity Fair, which he claimed was his first ever sober interview.

“It’s the worst thing I have said in my life, but I didn’t mean it,” said Galliano of the statements. “I have been trying to find out why that anger was directed at this race. I now realize I was so (expletive) angry and so discontent with myself that I just said the most spiteful thing I could.”

Following his anti-Semitic rant, Galliano underwent treatment for drug and alcohol abuse at an Arizona rehabilitation center.

He has been almost entirely absent from fashion, apart from a three-week designer-in-residence role at Oscar de la Renta’s workshop in New York in 2013, reports AFP. Then, in May this year, he reappeared in Moscow as the creative director of Russian cosmetics chain L’Etoile.

(INN)

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