The Metropolitan Museum of Art Is Making a Very Bad Mistake

Dana Thomas is the author of “Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.”

Thirty years ago this fall, a young, brash British fashion designer named John Galliano, known as much around Paris for his partying ways as for his gorgeous, outlandish creations, was hired by the august couture house Christian Dior to be its new creative director. For his first Dior haute couture show, staged at the Le Grand Hotel in January 1997, he presented a mash-up of Edwardian dressing, 19th-century Japonism and Maasai tribal wear, including bustled gowns, cinched corsets draped with tiny yellow and orange ceramic beads, and an opium-den-like sheath in chartreuse satin trimmed........

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