John Galliano Opens Up

John Galliano has opened up toFrench psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik about the anti-Semitic comments that he was recorded saying in a Paris café in 2011, which led to his dismissal from Dior.

"What happened in the Parisian café, La Perle, was a defence mechanism," he told Cyrulnik, in the interview for French publication Le Point. "I repeated a pattern that I had known as a teenager and I was in an explosive mix of drugs and alcohol. February 24, 2011, I was no longer myself. I said the most terrible, the most unbearable, the most horrible thing."

When asked if he felt he had been punished too much for his actions Galliano said: "I've lost, but I also gained a lot. I'm a creative person, and no one can take that away from me. I've been told I committed professional suicide because it was the only escape from the terrible pressures I was facing", reports  WWD.

John Galliano

The interview is the most revealing since Galliano's 2013 televised interview with Charlie Rose, in which the fashion designer said he hoped that he would be given a second chance.

After stints at  Oscar de la Renta, and various collaborative projects including one with Stephen Fry (designing the stage costumes for the playwright's forthcoming production) and one with British Vogue ( working as a guest fashion editor on a fantastical shoot with muse and friend kate Moss), it was announced in May that Galliano would be making a move to beauty, working as a consultant on beauty projects with Russian company LÉtoile.