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John Galliano Exits the Way That He Entered IN the last two months, the editor of French Vogue has resigned; the president of Yves Saint Laurent said she power balance wholesale will leave her dream job to run the vanity label of Reed Krakoff, the Coach creative director, whose one dream is apparently to be successful. Gucci Group cut its chief executive loose. The first anniversary, on Feb. 11, of Alexander McQueen’s suicide brought up another loss, another memory. And on the nausea went until, implausibly, John Galliano self-destructed in a liquored-up “I love Hitler” rant — caught, as so many career-enders are these days, on video and circulated on the Web. Some felt the panic more than others and wondered if it was not time for them to get out, too. Some confronted it the only way the modern media world allows, by riding it out and planning to get to the Mugler show early on Wednesday night, because Lady Gaga was expected to model and there would be a scene. But in this context, the words “the show must go on,” hoisted like a dinky white flag, feel callow. One thing is for sure: Dior’s chief executive Sidney Toledano and his boss, the biggest pencil in the luxury-goods business, Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH Mo?t Hennessy Louis Vuitton, had to begin dismissal procedures against Mr. Galliano. They couldn’t tolerate the public hating by Mr. Galliano, however out of character his defenders said it was for him. In circumstances like these, a sensible millionaire designer would have jumped into his chauffeured car and gone to his boss and pleaded insanity, whereupon he would have been given an all-expense-paid trip to rehab. But that’s just it: Mr. Galliano is not a sensible man, any more than fashion chiefs are missionaries. Last Friday, when Dior suspended him, many fashion writers suspected that the company was seizing an opportunity to fire him after 15 years on the job. Though he could still dazzle with haute couture, like last summer’s flower-tinted collection, the real business is in accessories and ready-to-wear — and Mr. Galliano’s own eccentric turn-outs at the end of shows were often all editors talked about as they buzzed and buzzed about Phoebe Philo of Céline or someone equally relevant. “That’s the superficial fashion world talking,” a fashion executive said on Tuesday night. If Mr. Toledano had wanted an excuse to fire Mr. Galliano, he could scarcely have ordered up a worse public-relations nightmare, one that could still engulf Dior. As it is, Mr. Galliano did not contact Dior after the incident last Thursday, nor over the weekend, said a company executive who requested anonymity because of the unusual nature of the situation. “He was denying it,” the executive said. But the lack of communication between the house and its star designer at such a crucial moment points to deeper strains. (On Wednesday, the Paris prosecutor announced that Mr. Galliano would stand trial for racial insults. Also on Wednesday, Mr. Galliano released his first statement. It said in part: “I only have myself to blame and I know that I must face up to my own failures and that I must work hard to gain people’s understanding and compassion. To start this process I am seeking help and all I can hope for in time is to address the personal failure which led to these circumstances and try and earn people’s forgiveness.”) In a way, luxury groups like LVMH are reaping what they sowed in the mid-’90s, when they hired supremely talented designers like Mr. Galliano, Mr. McQueen and Marc Jacobs (for Louis Vuitton) to energize old labels. Not only was Mr. Galliano seriously gifted, with technical skills and a romantic sensibility that suited Dior’s femininity, he brought to Dior a spot-on sense of vision. And he had an outsize personality, a mixture of a fiery temperament and devil-may-care London, that people could relate to. In interviews, or during a preview of a collection at the Dior studio, Mr. Galliano always acted the charming host, with cigarettes in supply and people from the ateliers bringing down finished dresses. One night, quite late, I watched Mr. Galliano and his closest assistants — Bill Gaytten and the late Steven Robinson — do fittings for a collection inspired, improbably perhaps, by ancient Egyptian ladies and ’50s fashion goddesses. They worked in front of the studio’s mirrors, speaking quietly among themselves, while people from the house sat on some steps, at some distance. You sensed power balance wholesale the pressures on him. But he may have expressed his personality, and wicked humor, best on the catwalk. The only show I have ever stood to applaud was a Galliano show, six or seven years ago. He used a special casting of sideshow performers — twins, fat people, exceptionally tall people, freaks in most people’s eyes — and he closed the show with a supermodel dangling a puppet in his likeness. The manipulated designer. But who was pulling whose strings? On his return backstage from walking on the runway, he stopped in front of me and gave a little bow. He was delighted to have his work acknowledged, like all designers. MR. GALLIANO was a controversial choice for Dior when, in 1996, Mr. Arnault moved him from Givenchy. Even though Dior had become comically stiff and pretentious, the French took it seriously. Who was this English punk with braids? What did he know about couture? I remember going to the Dior ateliers, in 2000, and casually asking the woman who ran the drapery workrooms which of Dior’s designers she liked best: Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré or Mr. Galliano. She hesitated, then said: “Monsieur Galliano. He changed my eye.” Initially, Mr. Toledano was alarmed by some of Mr. Galliano’s ideas: the slashed and turned-upside-down garments that appeared in the Matrix collection, in 1999, at Versailles, and the controversial show inspired by Paris tramps. At the time, Dior was still pushing a bourgeois look in its Avenue Montaigne windows and advertisements (and in its Lady Di handbags), while Mr. Galliano was doing his best to destroy all that on the runway. I remember running into Mr. Toledano and Mr. Arnault at Dior one Saturday in 1999 or so, and telling them I didn’t understand what they were trying to do with the label’s style. “Just wait,” Mr. Arnault said, ever confident. “You’ll see. It will all come together.” And it did. In a matter of a year or so, beginning with the saddle bag, hip-hop logo denim, and new ads, created by Mr. Galliano with the photographer Nick Knight, Dior acquired a hot, coherent image. And Mr. Galliano produced some of his most exhilarating shows, like one in July 2003 based on ballet and another in January 2007, swirling with huge skirts and three-dimensional origami embroideries in the shape of birds. But increasingly one had the feeling that Mr. Galliano was indulged in ways that went beyond the normal — the driver, the bodyguard, the research trips, the vacations, the teams of assistants — and might have caused even the steadiest soul to lose touch with reality. Mr. Toledano is known to have repeatedly encouraged him to seek professional help for some issues (presumably, drinking), but Mr. Galliano’s replies were indirect. Or he said he would go to a spa. Certainly the demand on designers at big houses to produce multiple collections every year has taken both its creative and personal toll. “It’s not as if John didn’t have assistants doing the work, finding fabrics,” the Paris executive told me. “He just had to supply the vision.” But what was that vision in the last years? Dior wanted more commercial clothes. And isn’t there something horribly detrimental in separating a creative spirit from the actual mechanics of making clothes? It’s no wonder that young designers now question the model of big luxury houses and admire the slow-clothes method of Azzedine Ala?a, who still makes his patterns himself, or even Giorgio Armani, who works all the time. In one way or another, these whip-lashing events feel like a repudiation of certain beliefs. But the sadness and sense of waste is undeniable. Maybe one good thing that will come out of this is that Mr. Galliano will get some help. On Wednesday, there were news reports that he had left France and entered a rehab center, at balance bracelets the urging of colleagues and friends like Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss.