On Gallianogate, Gloria Steinem, Hotline Calls

Every Outfit

This week's Every Outfit podcast reflects on the passing of Gloria Steinem, a cultural icon and feminist pioneer, while also addressing the cancellation of John Galliano's highly anticipated

Key takeaways

• Gloria Steinem's death marks the end of an era for feminism and journalism, with her legacy celebrated through personal anecdotes and iconic imagery from her 1971 Vogue apartment.

Main topics

• Gloria Steinem's death and legacy
• Cancellation of John Galliano's Met exhibition

Notable quotes

"I bet all of you forgot about that. It does seem like something that we all collectively hallucinated."

Conclusion

The episode closes with a reflective and inclusive call to reexamine language around aging in fashion

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:04) $40 on shoes? What's the matter, Morty? Tomorrow? What's the thing? Great gowns. Beautiful gowns. Fashion has changed! Speaker 1 (0:24) I am Lauren Garoni. And I'm Chelsea Fairless. And welcome back to the Every Outfit podcast. This week we are doing a mailbag and hotline episode because it's the last days of summer. Chell and I were like, what breaking news could possibly happen this week? And boy, were we wrong. Speaker 1 (0:52) So Gloria Steinem died. We just heard about this moments ago. It's not great that two mornings this week and the week isn't even over. I've woken up to horrible news. Horrible news. To be fair, she was 92. As I say to people who get to their 90s and pass away, they've lived all of the life. And as I always say, doesn't make it any less sad. I understand that. It did seem like Gloria Steinem would live forever. Yeah, I expected her to make it to 100. I don't know why. But it was announced today that she passed away peacefully. Speaker 1 (1:29) Yesterday in her home, her fabulous, fabulous home that I feel like we spoke about fairly recently. I don't remember why. I think there was an Architectural Digest tour of her home or something that we watched. Like they did a bit of a refresh on her home, but Gloria Steinem has legendary taste in decorating. The most fabulous apartment that she ever had was photographed for Vogue in the 70s. I encourage everyone to look this up. Amazing. But yeah, a tragic death, a terrible way to start this morning. Yeah. And to think she was just on and just like that. Oh my God. I bet all of you forgot about that. It does seem like something that we all collectively hallucinated and it did feel like that. Speaker 1 (2:14) when we watched it at the time. And that was part of our live show. So many nights last year, year before that. Who can say? We talked about that moment, but not to talk about other things, but I was fed a clip from the first season event just like that on TikTok. And I was like, I literally have no memory of this ever happening. It was a conversation where Miranda and Carrie were talking about. who's the better swimmer or something? I'm like, what is this? I don't remember that either. But Gloria made other television appearances. She was also on the L Word playing herself. She was in the First Wives Club. Of course. Just having a conversation with Bronson Pinchot that we never heard. An extra, basically. Yes, a glorified extra. Recently, we saw Rose Byrne. Speaker 1 (3:06) do an incredible performance as Gloria Steinem on that Phyllis Shafley show. What was that called? I did watch that, but it's like I watched it and then I immediately forgot about it. I did too. Again, there is something about streaming shows that make whatever you watch immediately go out of your brain. Mrs. America. Yes. I actually did meet Gloria Steinem. A couple times, actually. Once I was walking into a fundraiser for some organization. I forget what it was. Something gay. The Center, Lambda Legal, something. And I was walking through the door at the same time as her, and she looked so major. She was wearing her signature outfit, which is just like a long-sleeved, form-fitting black shirt and a black pair of pants. Speaker 1 (4:01) And then she had the most incredible cuffs. They were these huge pave crystal cuffs that looked like vertebrae with like ribs coming out that like wrapped around her arm. I complimented her and asked her what they were. I forget what she said. I think they may have been Alexis Bittar. That seems likely. Seems likely. And then I was like. Thank you for everything. I love you. And of course, she always turns it back on you. She was like, well, thanks for being here and supporting this wonderful organization, you know. Gloria Steinem obviously did many amazing things over the course of her life. But my favorite anecdote that I like to tell people is at one time was Christian Bale's stepmother. Speaker 1 (4:46) You're right. People forget. She married his dad, David Bale, for a time. This was when he was an adult, so it's not like she was stepmother and kind of title only. We also think of her as an activist first and foremost, and obviously Ms. Magazine was part of that, but she was a journalist. She was a groundbreaking editor. My mom subscribed to Ms. for years and always instilled a reverence to Gloria Steinem within me. But she saved all of those issues, and I have a lot of them now. I took the best ones from her collection, which remains at home, but I have the incredible Barbara Kruger cover and just all the major issues, which I'm so grateful to have now. RIP to this legend. This is going to be quite the memorial. Oh, I can't even imagine. All right, let's get into it. Oh, God. The word clusterfuck. Speaker 1 (5:43) does not even begin to describe this Met Gala situation. So I woke up on Monday morning at 6.30 with the baby, and the first thing I saw when I cracked my eyes open was the news that John Galliano had bowed out of his Met exhibition, and that Met exhibition would not be going forward. You woke up before me. I woke up to like multiple texts and I truly can't remember the last time I have been this shocked by something. Like it's almost as shocking as when Alexander McQueen died. Yeah, because the show was announced truly a month ago. July 31st is when it was announced. August 31st was the announcement that it was canceled. And we discussed this when... Speaker 1 (6:33) We initially discussed that this retrospective was going to happen, that if Anna Wintour and Andrew Bolton were able to get it approved by the board, which they had tried to do in 2023 for the 2024 Met Gala exhibition and couldn't do it, that, okay, they got it through this time. You know, obviously they understood that there was going to be some backlash, but I didn't think that it would get canceled. No. The fact that it got canceled is unprecedented. and crazy. Right, because the only other Met Gala that has been canceled was because of COVID. Right. They've previously had scandals, like they had to rename one of their exhibitions after it was announced. It was initially called Chinese Whispers. The name was then changed to China Through the Looking Glass. But that's kind of like the biggest Speaker 1 (7:28) course correction that they've had to do around a show. So I first saw this news through Vanessa Friedman's reporting, who first reported that this exhibition was going to happen, had reported last weekend, at the beginning of last weekend, that there was some debate between the board and there was increasing backlash to the exhibition. But most of what was in that piece or what I had taken away from that piece was the fact that they were thinking of moving the Met Gala, the opening of the exhibition from the first Monday in May, which it famously always is that date, whatever that date is, to a week later so that it didn't conflict with the Holocaust Remembrance Day. Right. And this article also got into the fact that Jewish community leaders, as well as a lot of really powerful people in the art world, were objecting to this. It was reported that Speaker 1 (8:24) Arnie Glimcher, who founded the Pace Gallery, had emailed the Met and implied that because of this exhibition, he may reconsider giving them pieces from his collection that he promised to them when he passed away. This man is worth... hundreds of millions of dollars. And in subsequent reporting that we've gotten in the past week, it seems that multiple donors were not just implying that they were no longer going to donate or withhold donations. It seems like multiple people were like, were rethinking. donating our earmarked pieces that we were going to give the museum. So it was increasingly becoming clear that the backlash to this exhibition was going to have ramifications for not just years, but decades to come. Yes. So Galliano releases this statement on Instagram. He wrote, Speaker 1 (9:46) conduct over time. He goes on to thank Andrew Bolton, Anna Wintour, the Costume Institute, as well as, quote, all those who have guided, supported, and accompanied me throughout these 15 years of sobriety and recovery from alcoholism and addiction. Are you looking for the comfort of an everyday bra with the support of a sports bra? If so, look no further than Honeylove's Crossflex Activity Bra. The Crossflex Activity Bra is the ultimate support bra for everyday activities and light to moderate movement. I know my podcaster lifestyle may make it seem like I have infinite time in a day, but I am often running around all day every day. 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Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Experience the new standard and comfort. Speaker 1 (11:21) and support with Honeylove. So it's interesting because Vanessa Friedman, who we discussed when this exhibition was first announced, if you read between the lines, was not thrilled that this exhibition was happening. She has kind of been on the forefront of reporting the controversies and backlash going on behind the scenes in trying to get this exhibition. to happen. But even she phrased this as Galeano bows out, as if it was his choice to not go through with this exhibit. Do we think that's true? Well, we subsequently learned more about how this all went down from later New York Times reporting. I don't think you get to this level. Speaker 1 (12:10) of clusterfuck, as you phrased it, unless there are multiple factors going on in tandem. I don't think he officially pulled the plug. Obviously, a part of it is clearly letting John Galliano control the narrative a little bit, but I think it's multiple things. Totally. Well, according to the New York Times, the Met called an executive committee meeting for 8 a.m. on Monday. And then there was a video conference with the entire board, which includes like 100 people. Yeah, this is what is fascinating and what I learned this past week, because when Vanessa Friedman first reported about this in her scoop, the thing that we highlighted that we thought was... Speaker 1 (12:52) just a campy statement was this idea that at one point Andrew Bolton and Anna Wintour and John Galliano and a bunch of rabbis and Jewish leaders went to the board. And I had no idea that evidently the entire board, which is a hundred people, some of them, most of them did not know about this exhibition until it was announced. Right. And that board meeting was scheduled for 4 p.m. on that day. At 8.45, they released this announcement. I think there was an understanding between Galliano and Andrew Bolton and Anna Wintour that this wasn't going to happen and that the best thing to do at this stage would be for Galliano to get ahead of it rather than be forced out. Right. Would be my guess. I also think there's a part of this where... Speaker 1 (13:44) And much has been reported about how did Anna Wintour get this so wrong? But if I'm Galeano and I've gone through the motions, not the motions of rehabilitating himself, but the motions of like going to the board, meeting with Jewish leaders, getting there okay, I would think that I was in the clear. And I think there was a certain point, if I had to guess, where Galeano was like, this isn't worth it. Like I went through one cancellation and I barely survived that. I don't know if I can survive another wave of this. Oh, I'm sure he got to that point where he felt that it wasn't worth it. But I think that he is someone that would have honored his obligations. He knows that Anna and Andrew Bolton stuck their necks out for him. He's not walking away. Right. Speaker 1 (14:34) Like, you know, he's honoring that commitment. I think it just got to a crisis peak where everyone realized this isn't going to happen. This isn't going to work. We miscalculated how the public, how the donors would respond to this. And the donors are a big part of this, but it bears repeating that Anna Wintour. In her work with the Met Gala that started in 1995, that's when she took over leadership of the Costume Institute benefit. It was just reported in the New York Times what the figure was, but I had like gone back to try to figure this out. To date, she has raised $500 million, a half a billion dollars for the Costume Institute. They keep besting their figures every year, right? 2024, they raised $26 million. Speaker 1 (15:25) Last year, they shattered that by raising $42 million. And so, you know, how did she get this so wrong is something that I've seen on the internet a bunch. She has earned the right to put forth the exhibitions that she wants, or at least she thought. Yes. But there was also a curveball that was thrown in, which is the Lauren London claim. Right. So... Earlier in August, this Facebook post began circulating on the internet that was posted by a fashion publicist who had written that she had been at some very fancy spa in Italy in 2018. An alcohol-free spa, I noticed. An alcohol-free spa. I googled this place. It all looks very White Lotus-y, fancier than White Lotus. And she said that she was with a friend of hers. Speaker 1 (16:22) who was speaking Hebrew on the phone. And John Galliano started shouting at her, Merry Christmas, over and over again. And the friend was like, do you have a problem with Hebrew? And he allegedly said yes. And she said, well, I have a ton of your clothes. When I go back to Israel, I'm going to get rid of all of your shit. And he was like, great, do that. And that was the alleged incident. When I saw this, I was like, I need a journalist to verify these claims. Right. And that took quite some time, but the New York Times did speak to this woman, spoke to the friend, spoke to the daughter of this woman who corroborated this story. We should say that Galeano denies that this incident happened. Yes, of course. If this is true, this is not great. Obviously, this contradicts. Speaker 1 (17:17) the rehabilitation narrative, which has been central to the justification for this exhibition. For sure. And this did appear in Vanessa Friedman's reporting. There have been so many articles that I'm not sure which one this appeared in, but it's not clear if that incident had an effect on the donors. That's what I'm saying. Like there are parallel paths kind of all going on that all lead to just a... fundamental miscalculation that this year was the year to have a Galeano exhibition, if at all. And in various articles that I've read, and there was a piece from Puck News today, glad we pay to be in the inner circle by Dylan Byers that's called Anna Bolin, which this article and then various Vanessa Friedman pieces, it does seem like there is inner turmoil within the board about Speaker 1 (18:14) the power that Anna Wintour wields with the Met Gala. So I'm not saying that they did this to get back at her, but there was certainly that as an element, it seems, or at least I'm gathering from these various articles of the board, which is made up of 100 people, not being thrilled at what a circus and spectacle the Met Gala itself has become. Totally. Which I think gets to Robin Givhan's op-ed that she wrote in the New York Times. Yes. Where she argued that the exhibition should continue, but the gala itself should be canceled. Which would never happen. Less extreme than canceling the exhibition. I think she made a very good argument for this. She absolutely did. But because, I mean, that's the central tension of what I was just trying to get at, which is I do think that there's a general resentment of the Met board. Speaker 1 (19:09) towards Anna Wintour for how much of a spectacle she's made the Met Gala and how that perhaps makes the Metropolitan Museum at large look. But she also brings in a ton of money for the museum. For the Costume Institute, though, which is a completely separate entity financially. That is true. And what fascinates me about the exhibition itself being canceled, at least in like the first hours before we got all of these follow-up articles, was, you know, if it's donors pulling donations to perhaps the Costume Institute itself, there was that article earlier this year that the Costume Institute, because the gala has brought in so much money, Andrew Bolton gave an article where at the Speaker 1 (19:51) this point they have a semi-endowment and plan to be self-funded by 2030. But it is clear that it was the larger institution itself pushing back on this Costume Institute exhibition. But going back to the exhibition being canceled, after the shock wore off, I was like, okay, so then everyone's happy. Like, the people that did not want this exhibition to happen got what they wanted, and then I was surprised to see, for the rest of that first day on Monday, people being upset that the exhibition wasn't going to happen, which I wasn't expecting. Yeah. 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Speaker 1 (22:05) Well, the reality is, if this exhibition had happened, it would have been a huge blockbuster exhibition for the Costume Institute, even with the controversies. And perhaps in part because of the controversies, in the sense that the McQueen show also had this layer of darkness surrounding it, for obvious reasons, that I think was one of the factors that drew hordes and hordes of people to go see it. Of course. And I mean, the reason that he would have been the only third living designer to have a retrospective is his influence. You know, whether you are aware of it or not in fashion, you know, if you like the Dior saddlebag, he's the man that brought that to life. Speaker 1 (22:50) Yes. I feel like in all of this reporting about the cancellation of the exhibition and John Galliano's anti-Semitism is it kind of glosses over the fact that I wonder how many people knew that this exhibition was going to directly confront his problematic behavior. Right. Which is why I always thought it was weird that. people were taking the stance when this exhibition was announced of like, well, yeah, Galeano is worthy of an exhibition of his work, but when he's dead, it's like, do you think when he dies that there's going to be this sharp of a lens or criticism about his past mistakes? I mean, death does have a way to kind of deify people. Totally. Speaker 1 (23:38) I came of age in the 90s where there was a big conversation about what sort of art should be shown in museums, and right-wing, family-values-type conservatives were going after artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Andre Serrano. And this isn't totally dissimilar in the sense that this exhibition may have been canceled because a group of people have a moral objection for the show, and... wanted to bar the public from seeing the show. Whatever you think of Galliano, I do think the circumstances of how this went down are scary. Again, this is a clusterfuck. There are a lot of different factors that play into this. But I don't think that we should feel great about that. No, and Robin Gavon in her op-ed... Speaker 1 (24:28) gets into this. She says, museums help society undertake painful conversations to contextualize art and craft and to explore confounding contradictions. I am desperate for our cultural institutions to have an intellectual spine at a time when the political currents are eroding access to terrible truths and our ability to sit with anger and pain. Very, very true. And very well said. She goes on to say, I believe Mr. Bolton could have helped people understand how anti-Semitism takes root and grows in the mind of someone like Mr. Galeano. He regularly romanticized the disenfranchised and idolized hierarchies. This whole clusterfuck made me think about the Chanel exhibition that they did in 2005, which... Speaker 1 (25:13) I actually did see. And I don't remember them addressing her controversial past, her Nazi ties within that exhibition. I remember there was one gown that had a little plaque that said something to the effect of like, this is significant to World War II for some reason, but it wasn't giving like Coco Chanel had a Nazi boyfriend. kind of vibes. Right. Coco Chanel collaborated with the Nazis so she could keep her business going. Right. And this was perhaps because Chanel sponsored this exhibition, paid for this exhibition. Andrew Bolton also worked on the Chanel show. He wasn't the number one, that was Harold Cota, but he was the number two on this show. And it's interesting because Speaker 1 (25:59) Chanel is owned by a Jewish family. So I can see how they would be like, yes, we know that Coco Chanel is an anti-Semite, but we don't want y'all to know about that. We don't want the general public to know about that because then that might impact sales of our perfumes and our bags and our jackets and shit. So I think it's really fascinating that the Met has had these two distinct opportunities. to grapple with the troubling histories of these designers, but they have not been able to do so potentially because of donors and donors dictating what people were allowed to see and know about. It's interesting. It's not even dictating. It's the threat of withholding future pieces of art that could be in the Metropolitan Museum. Speaker 1 (26:52) Well, in the case of the Chanel show, and again, we don't know this. And I do encourage people to revisit an article that Judith Thurman wrote for The New Yorker about this when the show came out, when she was very critical of this arrangement with the corporate sponsorship from Chanel. But that is the reality of the Costume Institute. It is funded by brands. There are always fashion brands sponsoring the gala. perhaps have influenced the curatorial direction of this museum. Well, and tech brands. Let us not forget last year, or last year, earlier this year, oh my god, people were pissed off that Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez Bezos underwrote the exhibition. Right. Not the donors, but the public. Right. Speaker 1 (27:46) This time the donors weren't mad. The greater populace was upset about that. Although no one has really discussed the fact that will there even be a costume exhibition in 2027? Because now I'm worried we're going to get like an eyewear focused costume institute that is funded by Meta. And it's going to like culminate in the Meta surveillance day classes. Well, they did say that they will announce. a new show