The Metropolitan Museum of Art will center its 2027 Costume Institute exhibition on everyday items, replacing a previously planned retrospective of British designer John Galliano. The new theme, titled extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday,
will open to the public on May 9, 2027, following the Met Gala on May 3.
A Shift from High-Profile Retrospective
The museum initially announced a tribute to John Galliano in late July 2026. Galliano is a significant figure in fashion history who served as creative director of Dior and later joined Maison Margiela in 2014 for a decade-long tenure.
Following pressure from donors, city officials, and members of the Jewish community, the museum and Galliano jointly announced the cancellation of the exhibition on August 31, 2026. New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, a vocal critic of the original theme, had met with museum leadership to voice opposition, noting that the gala would have coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2027. She described the cancellation as the correct decision, stating that the pain the event was causing was unacceptable.
John Galliano stated that he did not want the debate surrounding him to place The Met in a difficult position or to distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute. He added that he remained fully accountable for the pain caused by his words in the past, particularly the hurt he caused to the Jewish and Asian communities, and remained deeply sorry for it.
Anna Wintour, the Vogue global editorial director and longtime chair of the Met Gala, supported the decision. Wintour has driven the event’s success, having raised more than $200 million for the Costume Institute over her tenure.
“John’s decision that the exhibition devoted to his work should not take place at this time is very courageous and a measure of the man he is,” Wintour said in an August statement. “I believe this is the right decision, and both he and the Museum have my full support.”
Anna Wintour, Vogue global editorial director
Defining the New Theme
Curated by Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator in charge, with assistance from Stephanie Kramer and Emily Mushaben, the upcoming exhibition aims to highlight how fashion designers elevate common materials and clothing.
Bolton described the conceptual goal of the show during an interview regarding the exhibition’s focus, aiming to explore how designers rework familiar garments, everyday objects, and commonplace materials through craft, construction, material experimentation, and conceptual wit.
The exhibition is intended to reveal how meaning develops through the use and care of clothing, turning unremarkable items into sources of wonder.
The exhibition will include a diverse array of artifacts, such as Brooke Shields’ iconic Calvin Klein jeans, Charles James’s 1930s couture puffer coat, and trompe l’oeil leather jeans designed by Matthieu Blazy for Bottega Veneta. The show will also feature Jun Takahashi’s fall 2024 Watching a Working Woman
collection for Undercover, which was inspired by Wim Wenders’s film Perfect Days, as well as silverware-adorned garments from Maison Margiela’s spring 2027 collection.
Museum pivots to provocative everyday theme after cancellation
The cancellation of the Galliano show forced the museum to assemble a new theme under a compressed timeline. Bolton emphasized that the new direction was not intended as a substitute, but rather a challenging and provocative exploration of the everyday.
“I had no Plan B, to be honest,” Bolton said. “It was really important to come up with an exhibition that wasn’t just a masterwork show or something that we could do a little bit more easily. I wanted it to be as challenging and as provocative and as beautiful as a John show would have been. I committed myself to this really quickly because it brings up ideas of value and consumption and resourcefulness and makes us question what we overlook and what we discard.”
Andrew Bolton, Costume Institute curator in charge
The 2027 Met Gala, which serves as the primary fundraiser for the Costume Institute, is scheduled for May 3. Unlike previous years, the museum did not hold a press conference for the announcement, and there are currently no plans for an exhibition catalog. While the exhibition will run through January 9, 2028, the specific dress code and the slate of celebrity hosts for the gala event will be announced at a later date. With Moncler confirmed as a design sponsor, expectations are high for guests to interpret the theme through conceptualizations of denim, puffer coats, and other outerwear.
The shift in theme has sparked industry conversation regarding future themes. Fans across the internet have championed the legacy of the late Bob Mackie as the focus for a new theme, an idea cosigned by stylist Law Roach.