Met Gala organizers and Costume Institute curators believe it’s possible to hold designer John Galliano’s hate-spewing past and fashion genius at the same time — maintaining it’s in fact impossible to study one without the other.

This was the rationale behind the choice of Galliano, who rose to fashion world prominence during the drug- and ego-fueled 1990s, as the focus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s spring 2027 exhibition, “John Galliano: Horizons,” the curators said. Galliano is the third living designer to have his work showcased, after Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons in 2017.

Indeed, the rants that got Galliano fired from Christian Dior, convicted of hate speech in a Paris court and sent to rehab in 2011 are part of his fashion story, the institute said, promising to “directly address the rupture caused by his antisemitic, racist and anti-Asian conduct in 2010 and 2011″ while also taking into account his substance abuse treatment “public acknowledgment of his actions.”

Galliano fell from grace in 2011 after video showed him slamming fellow Paris café patrons with antisemitic insults, then drunkenly slurring, “I love Hitler.” He testified that he didn’t even remember the incidents due to his “triple addiction” to alcohol, Valium and sleeping pills.

Since then, the designer has educated himself, with the help of Jewish leaders, about the Holocaust and antisemitism in general, according to reports.

Confronting his controversies goes hand in hand with examining the designer’s work, given that Galliano has profoundly influenced fashion’s roadmap either way, the Costume Institute said in a statement announcing the exhibit’s theme. Nonetheless, curator Andrew Bolton consulted with Jewish leaders in New York City before finalizing their choice, The New York Times reported.

The exhibit will explore the ways that “his conduct, its consequences, and changing cultural values have reshaped our understanding of his work,” Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton said in the museum’s statement, noting that the exhibition will also examine Galliano’s sources of inspiration and his creative process.

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