Top fashion designer John Galliano, already suspended from Dior for alleged anti-Semitic insults, faced fresh trouble after a video emerged of him saying he loved Adolf Hitler.
The video posted on a British newspaper’s website is the latest blow to the flamboyant Mr Galliano, 50, who was briefly detained last week for an alleged anti-Semitic rant, leading another woman to accuse him of a similar incident last year.
In a video posted on The Sun’s website, the visibly inebriated British designer tells a woman at a Paris café I love Hitler and adds: “People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be gassed.”
The Sun said Mr Galliano was at the same café, La Perle, in the trendy and historically Jewish Marais district of Paris which is a popular gay spot, where he allegedly assaulted a couple and made anti-Semitic comments last week.
Dior suspended the British designer on Friday the day after he allegedly assaulted and used anti-Semitic insults against a couple in Thursday’s incident at La Perle.
But a source close to the investigation said on Monday that none of the witnesses questioned by police in connection with last Thursday’s incident at La Perle confirmed that Mr Galliano had made the comments.
Two security guards and the manager of the café said in letters that they had not heard the alleged anti-Semitic remarks.
And two customers who were in the café at the time of the incident and who were questioned by police on Monday also said they had not heard Mr Galliano pass the comments. But Mr Galliano met with his accusers in a Paris police station on Monday and the couple maintained their allegations against the fashion designer.
That incident led a woman who allegedly suffered similar abuse in October 2010 to come forward and lodge a complaint against Mr Galliano.
She said that at the time she put the incident down to excessive alcohol consumption.
After the remark about Hitler in the video posted on the Sun’s website, a woman is heard saying “Oh my God”, before asking Mr Galliano – whose speech is slurred – if he has a problem.
He replies: “With you. You’re ugly.”
The newspaper said the group of friends insulted by Gibraltar-born Mr Galliano were French and Italian, but not Jewish.
Mr Galliano allegedly mocked the 48-year-old woman’s physique before firing off anti-Semitic insults in English.