Disgraced Galliano gets rave reviews for new line

It looks like you have to do more than say on video that you love Hitler to lose the admiration of your peers in the world of fashion. That would seem to be the message to take from the critical reception to John Galliano's show at Paris Fashion Week yesterday.

The headline in Le Parisien, France's best-selling tabloid, was 'La mini-collection Galliano très applaudie' and British fashion writers have been similarly effusive.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Hilary Alexander said the 50-year-old British designer had displayed "his brilliance in absentia... [with an] emotionally staged presentation which recalled the romantic and seductive power of his vision".

In pictures: John Galliano at Paris Fashion Week

The show was a low-key affair with no television cameras allowed inside the townhouse in the fashionable 16th district of Paris and only 100 guests invited to see the collection.

Sidney Toledano, Christian Dior's chief executive, was there to greet all guests on arrival though he refused to discuss John Galliano, sacked last week as Dior's head designer for alleged anti-Semitic comments. "I have nothing to say," he told reporters. "I am here to show my support for the teams who have worked so well."

At the main Christian Dior catwalk show on Friday, Toledano had been only too eager to distance himself from Galliano (who is rumoured to have entered an Arizona rehab clinic in recent days), taking to the stage before the show to tell the audience that it had "been deeply painful to see the Dior name associated with the disgraceful statements attributed to its designer, however brilliant he may be".

Yet there is a growing feeling in the fashion world that Galliano – however outrageous his alleged statements may have been – has been made a scapegoat by Dior, who fired its chief designer before he was given an opportunity to explain his behaviour.

The fashion house notoriously collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of France in World War Two and some in France suspect that Dior is using Galliano to atone for its sins of the past.

The first prominent designer to break cover and offer his support to Galliano was Jean-Paul Gaultier, who said of the Briton's fall from grace: "It's sad, because he is an enormous talent."

Speaking on Saturday after his own show at Paris Fashion Week, Gaultier added that he didn't believe Galliano was a bigot because his designs draw on inspiration from all races and religions. "Everything he has done has not revealed someone who is racist - quite the opposite."

And the 57-year-old Gaultier also expressed reservations about the footage filmed on a mobile phone in which Galliano is heard to praise Adolf Hitler.

"With recordings, people can be made to say things that they did not say. They pronounce some words, but in what context? The person [in conversation with Galliano in the clip] seems very assured, knowing full well what she is doing." ·