Alexander Wang vs. John Galliano: how fashion decides who gets to return
Fashion doesn’t do “justice” the way people hope it does. It does motion. It does distance. It does reframing. And when someone asks why Alexander Wang “got away,” the uncomfortable answer is: the industry isn’t built to deliver closure; it’s built to deliver the next season.
With Alexander Wang, the public story arrived as a swarm: sexual misconduct and assault allegations surfaced widely in late 2020/early 2021. Wang denied them, later issued a statement that he would “do better,” and attorney Lisa Bloom (representing multiple accusers) said her clients met with him, spoke their truth, and were “moving forward.” ([Complex][1]) That arc: allegations → denial → apology/meeting → continued business, can feel like escape precisely because it doesn’t offer a clear, public mechanism of accountability. It offers resolution language without a visible resolution.
John Galliano’s fall, by contrast, was caught on video, detonated through mainstream media, and triggered immediate institutional response. Dior fired him in 2011 after footage and reports of antisemitic and racist remarks, and he was later convicted in France for public insults tied to origin/religion. ([The Guardian][2]) The industry could point to a single, undeniable artifact (the footage), and a formal outcome (conviction), and say: something happened, and something was done.
That difference matters because fashion is obsessed with what it can package.
Galliano’s comeback was built as a decade-long narrative of exile, addiction recovery, remorse, and slow re-entry: first into the shadows, then into Maison Margiela, where he took the role of creative director in the mid-2010s and eventually produced the kind of cultural “holy-shit” moment that made the internet forget how to blink. ([ABC][3]) Even his later exit from Margiela was framed in the language of healing and repair: “wings mended,” creative safe space, survival. ([AP News][4]) In other words, Galliano returned with a story fashion understands: the tortured genius who hit bottom, paid visibly, and came back changed; whether everyone believes that change is sincere or sufficient is still contested. ([The Guardian][5])
Wang’s situation is structurally different in a way people underestimate: he is not merely a designer; he is a brand-owner. You can eject an employee from a house (Dior firing Galliano), but you can’t “fire” the founder from his own label without collapsing the entity. ([The Guardian][2]) So the industry’s usual lever (corporate separation) doesn’t click into place. The system defaults to something else: waiting, repositioning, rerouting attention, and letting the market decide.
And markets rarely decide as one body.
One reason “getting away” is possible is that fashion backlash is often regional, while revenue is global. Business coverage has noted Wang’s efforts to rebuild and grow, including a stronger focus on China and expansion there; an ecosystem where the backlash dynamics and consumer priorities can differ from Western social-media outrage cycles. ([Business of Fashion][6]) When an industry can keep the lights on somewhere, it can survive being “canceled” somewhere else.
Then there’s the question nobody wants to say out loud at the afterparty: what kind of wrongdoing is “legible” to fashion?
Galliano’s scandal was (1) public, (2) recorded, (3) easily summarized, and (4) tied to a legal finding. ([The Guardian][2]) It was ugly, but it was cleanly narratable. Sexual violence allegations (especially those connected to nightlife, power imbalances, intoxication, fear, and social pressure) often don’t produce the neat public receipts people demand before they’ll support consequences. That’s not a moral excuse; it’s a structural reality of how proof, publicity, and power interact. And fashion is a world that runs on plausible deniability the way it runs on tailoring: expertly, habitually, and without apology.
So when you compare the two comebacks, you get two different machines:
Galliano’s return was redemption-as-theatre: shame, silence, time, rehab, remorse, then art so undeniable it threatens to overwrite memory. ([The Guardian][5])
Wang’s return is continuity-as-strategy: deny, soften, “moving forward,” keep selling, shift markets, re-enter the conversation through shows and brand milestones until outrage fatigues. ([Complex][1])
Neither arc answers the question people are really asking, which is: What does accountability look like when an industry’s primary value is aesthetic power?
THE VERDICT:
Fashion doesn’t rehabilitate people. It rehabilitates images.
And the more profitable the image, the more the industry will confuse “return” with “resolution”—until the only ones still holding the original question are the people who were hurt, watching the lights come back on.
[The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/mar/01/john-galliano-sacked-by-christian-dior)
[People.com](https://people.com/john-galliano-says-he-struggled-to-forgive-himself-following-2011-antisemitic-and-racist-rants-new-documentary-8612631)
[ABC](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-13/designer-galliano-makes-fashion-comeback-after-anti-semitic-rant/6013570)
[Complex](https://www.complex.com/style/a/tracewilliamcowen/alexander-wang-shares-new-statement-on-sexual-misconduct-allegations)
[Business of Fashion](https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/marketing-pr/alexander-wang-responds-to-sexual-misconduct-accusations-i-will-do-better/)
[Business of Fashion](https://www.businessoffashion.com/podcasts/luxury/the-debrief-unpacking-alexander-wangs-rise-fall-and-attempted-return-to-fashion/)
[1]: https://www.complex.com/style/a/tracewilliamcowen/alexander-wang-shares-new-statement-on-sexual-misconduct-allegations "Alexander Wang Shares New Statement on Sexual ..."
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/mar/01/john-galliano-sacked-by-christian-dior "John Galliano sacked by Christian Dior over alleged ..."
[3]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-13/designer-galliano-makes-fashion-comeback-after-anti-semitic-rant/6013570 "John Galliano makes London fashion comeback after ban ..."
[4]: https://apnews.com/article/dd0df3a34c5491950af0e57d412a9823 "British designer John Galliano leaves Maison Margiela after 10 years, his 'wings mended'"
[5]: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/04/john-galliano-high-and-low-kevin-macdonald-documentary "Fashion, addiction, antisemitism: the spectacular rise and fall of designer John Galliano"
[6]: https://www.businessoffashion.com/podcasts/luxury/the-debrief-unpacking-alexander-wangs-rise-fall-and-attempted-return-to-fashion/ "The Debrief: Unpacking Alexander Wang's Rise, Fall and ..."