Austin Hole
Austin Holmes

I believe in second chances. I don't think anybody's past should be a life sentence, and I've built a career around helping people and brands move forward—not stay stuck in whatever mistake put them on the front page. But you probably don't hand someone the opportunity to prove they've changed on one of the biggest stages in the world without putting a lot of thought into it first. And that's what happened with the Met.

John Galliano has taken real steps over the past decade to account for what he said in 2011. That matters. But this is a delicate issue in today's environment. Announcing "John Galliano: Horizons" as the exhibition anchoring next year's Gala deserved a lot more sober thought from the Met's team than it got.

Trust but verify was forgotten.

There are bad actors in this world, and as a society we should stand against what they represent. America was built and has become one of the greatest countries in history because we've stood against destructive ideas, and we have to keep doing that. But standing against something isn't the whole job. We also have to stand up for and speak about the things that move us forward, together, toward something better. Anna Wintour said the exhibition "wouldn't shy away from any of the darkness in John's past," and I actually respect that instinct. Nobody's asking for a sanitized story. What I'm questioning is whether "we'll be honest about it" was ever going to be enough armor for a decision this exposed.

Here's what tells me the story. The plan changed. Fast, and under pressure, after weeks of the Met defending the decision publicly. That reversal is the evidence. If this outcome had actually been discussed and prepared for at the decision-making stage, walking it back wouldn't have looked like a scramble. What it looks like instead is a team that took an "it'll be fine" approach to a decision that never should have gotten an "it'll be fine."

In PR, you address the hard question first, not last. You get ahead of the objections before you're standing in front of them. That didn't happen here, and the backlash made it obvious. It is far more costly to fix a problem in public than it is to prepare for it in private so the problem never becomes a headline in the first place. Preparation beats reaction every single time. I've built my whole career on that line, and this is exactly the kind of situation that proves it out.

None of this means you play it safe and say nothing. Set things up knowing somebody is going to be offended, because somebody always will be, whether you're announcing a fashion retrospective or a new flavor of chocolate bar. That tension is part of what builds attention and excitement around anything worth doing. But if the Met had framed this properly from the start, if the "we're not shying away from his past" message had been built and pressure-tested before the announcement instead of deployed as a defense after the fact, this could have been a win. Instead it became a controversy nightmare, and eventually Galliano pulled himself out of his own exhibition to end it.

That's the real failure. Not that a hard conversation got attempted. That it got attempted too late, in public, instead of early, behind closed doors, by someone with the standing to ask the uncomfortable question before the announcement went out and everyone was already invested in defending it.

My last note on this: I hope to see people work together in the future, because nobody's past is perfect. Second chances are worth extending. But extending one is a decision that deserves real weight behind it, not a press release and a hope that the framing holds. Let's build a better society together. That starts with getting the preparation right before we're forced into the reaction.

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Austin Holmes is the President of Publicity For Good & Signal Raptor and a Naval Special Operations veteran who lives in Nashville.