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Fashion, addiction, antisemitism: the spectacular rise and fall of designer John Galliano

He was the epoch-shifting auteur of 90s fashion. Then came drugs, grief and an infamous outburst. As Kevin Macdonald’s new documentary shows, self-destruction was all that could stop him

I remember being backstage after a Dior show in the mid-2000s, trying to find Galliano for a quote, eventually locating him cut off from the revelry, cloistered in a private VVIP room, flanked by two enormous security guards and attended by an assistant whose job was to light his endless cigarettes. But it’s a moot point; in the grip of addiction – to alcohol and also, perhaps, to fashion, or to the high drama of his job – Galliano was in no state of mind to pack a bag and check himself into rehab, and no one around him took it upon themselves to intervene. Toulouse-Lautrec and Brassaï references, corsets and merkins, breathtaking porcelain-effect peel-off makeup all made for a show that “will surely be remembered in history books, collected by museums, pored over by design students – and possibly extinguish the quiet luxury juggernaut with the tsunami of powerful emotions and fashion thrills it unleashed,” wrote Women’s Wear Daily.

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