Has John Galliano gone mad? The eccentric fashion designer is in the headlines for all the wrong reasons once again—this time for wearing what appeared to be Hasidic Jewish garb to Oscar de la Renta’s New York Fashion Week show. Galliano was already ousted from Christian Dior in 2011 after several drunken anti-Semitic remarks made in a Paris café, such as “I love Hitler,” were caught on video, went viral and got him in hot water with French authorities. Galliano was convicted of making racist insults in pubic and shunned by the fashion industry.

But last month de la Renta gave Galliano a second chance and invited him to work in his Midtown studio. New York’s Jewish leaders are none too pleased about Galliano’s latest choice of costume—a long black jacket, hate and curly “peyos,” sidelocks grown in the Hasidic community as a demonstration of faith.

“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 New York Post. “It looks like the hairstyle he added was done purposely to insult.”

Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind was equally appalled.

“Who is he mocking?” Hikind told the Post. “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?”

Abundant Galliano criticism was also posted to Twitter, with users Tweeting remarks such as, “Is John Galliano really so talented that the world must put up with his shameful antics?”

Still, some in the fashion community have defended Galliano, such as CFDA CEO Steven Kolb, who called the attacks “unfair.”

“That is John’s hair and how he dresses and certainly not a mockery of others,” before adding, “Let’s all take a deep breath, relax and remember it’s just clothes!”

And spokeswoman Liz Rozenberg told the Post that the accusations against Galliano are “not at all correct.”

It’s hard to imagine what other motive was being Galliano’s choice of costume. I mean, this is the guy who faced up to six months in jail of charges of “public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity” in France for telling a non-Jewish Italian woman, “’People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed.” Is it possible that after being stripped of his Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and being ordered to pay fines and symbolic damages to his victims and anti-racism groups Galliano somehow converted? Doubtful.

As one Lower East Side resident said, “Either Galliano is so deluded that he thinks wearing an outfit inspired by the dress of Hasidic Jews is some kind of apology, or it is simply another callous insult from someone who is already known as a drunken anti-Semite. Either way he’s an asshole.”

Or maybe just a shmuck, which—by the way—is basically the foreskin removed from the penis during circumcision, according to Urban Dictionary.

[Image via NY Post]