Anna Wintour ‘overplayed her hand’ with failed John Galliano Met Gala theme
Calls for Anna Wintour to take a break — or to release her ironclad grip on Vogue altogether — have hit fever pitch amid John Galliano’s announcement that he was removing himself as this year’s Met Gala theme.
Sources tell Page Six all roads lead back to Wintour’s zest to rehab her pal, when it comes to her latest scandal to rock Condé Nast since being named the company’s global chief content officer and artist director.
“Anna singlehandedly thought she could willfully get [Galliano] back in [fashion]. She’s been at it a long time, and she really misjudged it, and she made him vulnerable while doing that,” an industry insider told us.
“She’s not reading the f–king room … She really overplayed her hand. They really need to take a beat, take a year off, because people don’t have time for this s–t right now,” our source fumed.
Wintour and Galliano are longtime friends. She supported him in the years following a stint in rehab, as well as during his atonement for making antisemitic and racist remarks in a Paris café in 2011.
In February of this year, a fashion source spotted the duo having a long dinner with Vogue vet Grace Coddington at Balthazaar in New York’s Soho neighborhood, which led the source to speculate, “Something is up. Anna is up to something.”
In July, Wintour announced “John Galliano: Horizons” as the theme for the 2027 Met Gala. A source close to Wintour insisted the decision wasn’t all based on her influence.
“People seem to think she’s the sole person [making the decision about Met theme],” they said. “It’s a huge amount of people on the Met board that signed off on this. She’s a piece of that.”
“It wasn’t her decision alone, by any stretch of the imagination. His exhibition … people have been speaking about it for at least a couple of years. It was a big group decision. It’s a team effort. Not just her,” they added.
The choice sparked swift backlash from Jewish leaders and the museum’s donors as soon as it was announced.
On Monday. Galliano withdrew from the gala, writing in a statement: “I remain fully accountable for the pain caused by my words in the past, particularly the hurt I caused to the Jewish and Asian communities, and I remain deeply sorry.”
“I understand that meaningful atonement is not achieved through an exhibition, institutional recognition or a single public gesture. It is a continuing responsibility, demonstrated through listening, learning and one’s conduct over time,” he continued.
A Condé insider told us that Wintour, “doesn’t understand what people are talking about and thought she could shoulder through this and it would blow over,” adding, “Anna’s lost her touch on the zeitgeist.”
A rep for Wintour did not get back to us.
