Controversial Designer Galliano Caught Wearing Hasidic-like Threads
by Zach Pontz
Disgraced designer John Galliano ignited a new controversy yesterday when he was spotted wearing Hasidic-like clothing while on his way to a fashion show in New York City. Perhaps not the wisest choice of attire, considering he was blackballed by the fashion industry after a video surfaced of him going on a drunken anti-Semitic rant in 2011, Galliano’s choice of threads elicited a harsh response from several members of New York’s Jewish community.
“He’s trying to embarrass people in the Jewish community and make money on clothes [while] dressed like people he has insulted,” Williamsburg community leader Isaac Abraham told the Daily News. “It looks like the hairstyle he added was done purposely to insult.”
“Who is he mocking?” added Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind. “The way the socks look, the jacket, the peyos . . . My question is, who’s he laughing at?
“If it was just anyone else, I wouldn’t know what to say. But considering who this guy is, considering his background and what he’s said in the past, let him explain it to all of us: Are you mocking us?”
Galliano was headed to a fashion show hosted by Oscar de la Renta, who last month invited him to come work in his New York studio as a chance to inch his way back into the fashion industry.
“I would invite Mr. de la Renta and Galliano to come to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, so I can show them some Holocaust survivors and the clothes they [wear],” Abraham told the Daily News.
Rabbi and fashion designer Tobi Rubinstein Schneier was quoted as saying, “This was not very smart, unless he really wants attention. I’m hoping that this is not in any way a mockery through this attire.”
Asked for comment about Galliano’s get-up, spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg told the Daily News, “Your accusations are not at all correct.”