Add Page Six on Google The Fashion Police have laid down the law.
The day after John Galliano pulled out (or, as some sources hint, was forced out) of his Met Gala headliner status, red carpet expert Melissa Rivers called Page Six Style to discuss the repercussions to both the “party of the year” and its embattled leader, Anna Wintour.
“Anna Wintour is brilliant,” Rivers said from her gleaming Beverly Hills kitchen. “But people rarely say no [to her], and in the past, she’s made some mistakes of not reading the room correctly.”
Rivers says she was especially surprised that a designer with a history of anti-Asian and anti-Jewish bigotry would get a million-dollar party as New York City hate crimes continue to surge.
“He was such a force of nature in fashion and design… Is it a great time to honor his work? Unfortunately, no, not a great read of the room, especially coming off the whole backlash with [Jeff] Bezos and Lauren Sanchez,” she said, referring to the protests against last year’s Met Gala hosts — the Amazon scion and his ultra-glamorous wife — that tried (and failed) to start an Upper East Side class war.
The daughter of legendary Jewish American comedian Joan Rivers, Melissa admits her late mother “would have hated” a Galliano-themed bash — but that she was a fan of the clothes.
“One of my favorite dresses was Galliano,” she said. “Oh my god, one of the other favorite dresses was Galliano!” The gowns burned up in the 2025 LA fires. “What a waste. I think of it now as extreme closet cleaning.”
Rivers suspects the Gala’s early cancellation came as a relief to more than a few Hollywood publicists, none of whom wanted to prep their clients to speak about the nuances of art, redemption, and bias-cut lace lingerie.
“I’m sure people would have been very uncomfortable,” she said. “A lot of the publicists were white-knuckling it,” she added. Now “they’ve gotten blood back in their fingertips!”
So what should the new Met Gala theme be?
Rivers isn’t sold on the social media push to change the theme to honor the late Dolly Parton.
“I don’t think that’s wide enough of a theme,” she said, “because you don’t want everybody trying to impersonate someone.” She’s not even sure a show about “the Great West” would work, because cowboy couture belongs so strongly to one nice Jewish guy from the Bronx: “It’d be all Ralph Lauren!” she joked.
But Rivers admitted the worst theme would be miniskirts — specifically the kind that make your bare butt touch a subway or airplane seat. “This is my biggest fashion ick,” she said. “People who look uncomfortable in their clothes… and when you are sitting in a miniskirt or a minidress that literally your butt is going to be touching the chair.”
When she sees a teeny-skirted starlet on the red carpet, Rivers says she’s nearly as queasy as she was when Galliano’s initial Met Gala theme was chosen.
“You’re like, ‘Wow, she’s got legs!‘… And then you’re like, ‘Oh f—k, she has to sit down.'”
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