Strings to John Galliano’s bow: eminent fashion designer, label owner and now teacher? The controversial fashion designer is to teach a masters class at Parsons The New School For Design.

A visit to London's Central Saint Martins led people to believe he would take a rumoured teaching post there, a now-public memo sent to Parsons' BFA students would suggest otherwise. According to it, Galliano’s class will "engage its participants by provoking the power of emotion in context of fashion practice and exploration of intuitive, perceptive manners of investigational making". For the four days he is there, students are implored to use their "intuition and emotion" to try and understand "the intense pressure of sustaining a role at the very top of the design world." In the email, the fashion designer is described as a "master of tailoring, construction, research, and thematic investigation… an unparalleled living legend capable of blending and blurring the traditional boundaries of practice. A technical genius, after more than twenty-five years of practice, what inspires him most today is not a destination of a geographical sense but the divergent journeys of the soul, mind, and reflection."

John GallianoWill John Galliano moan about his students in the staff room?

Never shy of controversy, Galliano was dismissed from his position as creative director at Dior and his label in 2011 following a drunken anti-Semitic tirade that was captured on film. It was reported that year that Galliano was to face trial in Paris for allegedly "making racist comments to customers in a café". He had reportedly apologised "unreservedly" for his behaviour. Dior described the comments in the video as "odious".