![The Met Cancels the John Galliano Retrospective (with Dana Thomas) [TEASER]](https://cdn-images.podbay.fm/eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL21lZ2FwaG9uZS5pbWdpeC5uZXQvcG9kY2FzdHMvZDU0NTlhYTgtOWUzZS0xMWYwLWI2N2UtNjdjZGI5ODgyMWUyL2ltYWdlLzc3MGMxOGZkZjVlMmU4ZDdlMzVjOWU3ZjFmMTFlOTFiLnBuZz9peGxpYj1yYWlscy00LjMuMSZtYXgtdz0zMDAwJm1heC1oPTMwMDAmZml0PWNyb3AmYXV0bz1mb3JtYXQsY29tcHJlc3MiLCJmYWxsYmFjayI6Imh0dHBzOi8vaXMxLXNzbC5tenN0YXRpYy5jb20vaW1hZ2UvdGh1bWIvUG9kY2FzdHMyMjEvdjQvOTcvZWEvNDQvOTdlYTQ0NGQtYzFkYi00OTdhLWQyMDctNjg0ZmJhZGQ3ZTYyL216YV8xNjAzOTEyMTI5MTk3NTgyNTc0Ny5qcGVnLzYwMHg2MDBiYi5qcGcifQ.6QKIK7TKWJBBRXAhT6wFf1TzHsXBzU7EPTg4cbV3sC0.jpg?width=200&height=200)
This is a teaser of a paywalled episode. To listen in full, become a paid subscriber of Back Row at: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe. Or sign up in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
In a stunning move, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has cancelled "John Galliano: Horizons," the Costume Institute retrospective planned for May 2027.
Galliano's biographer and fashion journalist Dana Thomas joined Amy hours after the Met made the announcement. They discuss what this means for fashion, for John Galliano, and for the Met Gala's planner and previously all-powerful architect, Anna Wintour.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:30 Why Dana wasn't surprised
01:30 When you lose the politicians and the donors
03:00 "Not an aberration" — Dana's New York Times op-ed
05:00 The incidents that never got reported
06:00 The 2019 spa incident
07:30 What the comment sections revealed
11:30 Philippe Virgitti, still waiting for an apology
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Buy Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano: https://amzn.to/4cSeZHw
Edited by Chrissi Harris.
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Sep 1
15 min

*SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row newsletter for more coverage like this: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe. Go Premium and save three months on an annual subscription and get access to 'The September Issue' Rewatch Bonus episode!*
The September Issue is R.J. Cutler's 2009 documentary about the biggest issue of Vogue ever made up to that point — 843 pages, 13 million copies sold.
Amy is joined by Kate Casey, host of Reality Life with Kate Casey and a documentary and reality TV expert, to rewatch it seventeen years later. They get into what Anna Wintour really thought of the film, why she and her Vogue team hated Sienna Miller's hair so much, how it all aged, and much more.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
02:00 13 million copies sold — and what's left now
06:00 How Anna and Grace actually met
17:30 The retailers' breakfast, when Vogue set the trends
25:00 "Your girls always look the same" - Anna at her harshest
41:00 Anna at home, and the kids who didn't follow her
48:00 The Sienna Miller cover disaster
1:07:00 843 pages, and the era that ended
📺 SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row Newsletter: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe
📷 Follow Back Row on Instagram: @backrow
📷 Follow Amy on Instagram: @instamyodell
Follow Kate Casey
🎙️ Reality Life with Kate Casey:
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reality-life-with-kate-casey/id1154758766
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7iZzKUbEWAsWVkFRebb9Gu
📷 Follow Kate on Instagram: @katecaseyca
This episode was edited by Chrissi Harris.
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Aug 31
1 hr 9 min

Back Row is on vacation this week, so we're revisiting one of the most popular episodes of the year: a two-parter on Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, in honor of The Row's 20th anniversary.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were on television before they could talk and millionaires before they could read. Former Us Weekly editor-in-chief Dan Wakeford, author of the new Celebrity Intelligence newsletter, joins Back Row to break down the Full House casting story, the Dual Star empire, the billion-dollar licensing machine, and the NYU years that changed everything.
Part Two — revealing the secrets behind The Row — is available to Premium subscribers. Sign up at Back Row (https://www.backrow.net/subscribe) to get newsletter access included with your subscription, or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Find Part Two in Apple Podcasts here
Find Part Two in Spotify here
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:40 Dan Wakeford and Celebrity Intelligence
02:47 Why the Olsens are a unique case study
07:50 The Full House casting story
10:07 The reality of child stardom
16:22 How their personalities diverged early
19:49 From pennies to $80,000 an episode
26:27 The home video empire begins
33:28 The billion dollar licensing machine
48:00 Turning 18 and taking control
53:41 NYU and the paparazzi years
57:47 How everything changed
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Aug 24
1 hr

SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row newsletter for more coverage like this: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe. Go Premium and save three months on an annual subscription.
Is everything on social media — even lifestyle content — just rage bait now? New York Magazine features writer Rebecca Jennings joins Amy to unpack her hit Vulture piece on the "influencer recession," when aspirational content no longer works and creators have to come up with "brand-safe rage bait." What does this mean both for the content landscape but also, for rage itself?
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
02:00 What is the "influencer recession"?
02:45 The clipping economy & fake virality
05:15 Audrey Peters & the $25 DoorDash coffee
10:30 Why the Alo yacht flopped
14:35 Why Birkins are embarrassing now
19:30 The OpenAI influencer farm trip
24:00 Brands manufacturing their own rage bait
30:00 How Substack changed the game
34:30 Is rage bait losing its power?
Read Rebecca's story: The Influencer Recession — https://www.vulture.com/article/influencer-recession-audrey-peters-interview.html
Edited by Chrissi Harris.
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Aug 17
38 min

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Is fashion in the throes of a total creative collapse? Critic Eugene Rabkin — founder of StyleZeitgeist and author of the new book Torn: Fashion and Postmodernism — joins Amy to make the case. He argues luxury has "devolved into a consumerist spectacle," its lack of ideas papered over by relentless marketing.
They get into the greedflation behind a $140,000 Dior dress, why "craftsmanship" is the industry's greatest con, the Italian sweatshop scandals that never seem to stick, how Bernard Arnault turned the fashion world into the fashion industry — and the death of criticism, and why nobody seems to care.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
02:30 Fashion's creative collapse: the thesis
08:30 Greedflation & the $140,000 Dior dress
13:00 The craftsmanship con
15:00 Sweatshop scandals: Dior & Loro Piana's vicuña
23:30 The death of fashion criticism
32:00 Bernard Arnault & how he industrialized fashion
📺 SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row Newsletter: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe
📷 Follow Back Row on Instagram: @backrow
📷 Follow Amy on Instagram: @instamyodell
Follow Eugene Rabkin
📷 Follow Eugene on Instagram: @eugenerabkin
📚 Buy the book: Torn: Fashion and Postmodernism
This episode was edited by Chrissi Harris.
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Aug 10
41 min

John Galliano is the subject of the Costume Institute's 2027 exhibition and will be celebrated with his very own Met Gala. Galliano's biographer Dana Thomas — author of Gods and Kings, a dual biography about Galliano and Alexander McQueen — joins the show to talk about what this means. Amy and Dana recap Galliano's fall from grace and image rehabilitation — thanks to Anna Wintour.
This is a free preview. Hear the full conversation — a detailed recap of the controversy, the apology Galliano never made, and Amy's take on whether the Met should honor him — in the full episode in Back Row Premium.
Sign up for the newsletter at backrow.net/subscribe to access the newsletter plus all Premium podcasts, or subscribe for audio only in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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Aug 4
8 min

"Parisian Heist" author Jo Piazza joins Amy to break down the October 2025 Louvre robbery — the suspects, the mysterious "sponsor," and why authorities aren't sure the suspects are telling the truth.
Plus: why museum security is so basic, how art gets used to launder money and fund violent crime, the billionaire families who quietly run the art market, and what a $181 million Jackson Pollock says about the state of art and wealth.
(00:00) Introduction
(02:30) Recap: the Louvre heist, October 19, 2025
(04:30) The Isabella Stewart Gardner heist: $500M, still unsolved
(07:30) The arrests and the mysterious "sponsor" named Joe
(08:30) How basic museum security really is
(13:00) What was stolen: the Napoleonic crown jewels
(16:30) The Wildensteins & how art launders money
(30:00) The $60 billion shadow art market
(31:00) Restoring Empress Eugénie's crown & the French jewelry houses
(38:30) The $181M Pollock & Jerry Saltz's takedown of the art market
Subscribe to the Back Row newsletter: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe
Buy The Parisian Heist: https://amzn.to/4yLV6ex
Follow Back Row: @backrow · Follow Amy: @instamyodell · Follow Jo: @jopiazzaauthor
Edited by Chrissi Harris.
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Aug 3
45 min

In this special episode in collaboration with the Power User podcast Amy Odell joins tech journalist Taylor Lorenz to trace the arc of wearable tech — from the abomination that was Google Glass to Snapchat's vending-machine Spectacles and the company's recent $2,000 flop. Also, why Meta's rollout of it's new $299 fashion-first AI glasses, odious as many find them, may end up being a smash hit.
Follow Taylor's show Power User on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube, and subscribe to her newsletter, UserMag.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro — why everyone's arguing about Meta's glasses
01:36 Turning a camera into a fashion accessory
01:55 Welcome + the "hot surveillance summer" question
02:45 Google Glass and the original abomination
04:16 Snapchat Spectacles, vending machines, and a $130 flop
06:48 GoPro and how sports normalized filming everything
08:55 Ray-Ban Stories (2021) and the "creep" problem
10:57 2025: Oakley Meta and the first AI glasses
11:55 2026: low-profile frames, rhinestones, and AI as the real sell
13:25 The influencer rollout and the decline of fashion media
18:39 Why Kylie Jenner
21:40 How phones already normalized recording everything
24:56 Fashion, plausible deniability, and getting women on board
26:20 Will they actually sell? Meta's copy machine
29:19 The anti-screen crowd may be Meta's best customer
32:14 Beyond glasses: pins, pendants, and camera AirPods
35:29 Who owns the data? Facial recognition and the scary part
37:11 Zuckerberg, Bezos, the Met Gala, and OpenAI's fashion play
39:59 Snap's $2,000 flop and why ugly tech dies
43:03 Wrap-up
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Jul 30
43 min

***SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row newsletter for more coverage like this. Go Premium and save three months on an annual subscription.***
Town & Country editor Caroline Hallemann's new book is The Kennedys and the Windsors: The Story of Two Dynasties, One Born, One Made. She joins Amy to discuss the eerie parallels between these two dynasties.
Among the surprising stories in Hallemann's book: how Jackie Kennedy fought to keep wearing French designers as First Lady, why JFK Jr. wanted Princess Diana on the cover of George, the real story behind Diana's death and the ongoing conspiracy theories, and how Meghan Markle copied Carolyn Bessette's style. Plus: what Jack Schlossberg's blistering congressional loss means for the Kennedy dynasty.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
03:00 Young Jackie at Miss Porter's and her enduring fashion influence
08:00 What "American Love Story" got wrong about Carolyn Bessette
10:30 JFK Jr. launches George magazine
14:00 Why John wanted Diana on the cover
20:00 Diana's death: what actually happened
32:00 The conspiracy theories that still swirl around Diana's death
39:00 Why Meghan Markle keeps copying Carolyn Bessette's style
53:00 Is Jack Schlossberg the next JFK Jr.?
Subscribe to the Back Row newsletter: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe
Follow Caroline Hallemann: https://www.instagram.com/challemann/
Buy the book: https://amzn.to/4fVX8Bq
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Jul 27
58 min

This is a teaser of a paywalled podcast. Get the full episode by subscribing to the Back Row newsletter.
For podcast content only, go Premium on Apple or Spotify.
Joy Cioci has been in fashion for 23 years — first with her own ready-to-wear and bridal brand, and for the past six years, as a private stylist to some of the wealthiest families in the country.
She joins Amy to talk about what that job is actually like: how she pulls $80-90K worth of merchandise on loan for a single client, why some of her clients refuse to play the Hermès "game," and why women spending $1.5 million a year on clothes have no idea what just dropped at Chanel.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
4:00 Who Joy's clients actually are
9:30 How pulling merchandise on loan from stores works
11:00 Inside an $80-90K shopping trip
18:00 What ultra-wealthy people actually want from their wardrobe
21:00 Finding rare pieces no one else has
Follow Joy Cioci
📸 Follow Joy on Instagram: @joycioci
🛍️ Shop Joy Cioci: https://joycioci.com/
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Jul 20
24 min
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