“extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday” is the new exhibit coming next spring

NEED TO KNOW

• On Thursday, Nov. 5, Vogue revealed “extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday” for the 2027 Met Gala, which will look at everyday fashion through a new lens
• Costume Institute curator in charge Andrew Bolton told Vogue that he didn’t have a “plan B” after controversial designer John Galliano suddenly dropped out of becoming next year’s exhibit and theme honoree following massive backlash from the public
• Galliano upended his career in 2011 following a string of antisemitic and racist incidents

The new 2027 Met Gala theme is here after fashion designer John Galliano’s decision to exit the show due to public backlash.

On Thursday, Nov. 5, Vogue announced the new exhibit and theme to be “extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday,” which will look at everyday clothing in a new light.

Costume Institute curator in charge Andrew Bolton described the exhibit — which is also being worked on by Stephanie Kramer and Emily Mushaben — to Vogue as one that will encourage visitors “to see the everyday anew” from different perspectives: “one focusing on the elevation of archetypal garments…and the other examining how humble, even ‘disposable’ materials, from paper to aluminum to plastic, are transformed into wearable art,” reported Vogue.

“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,” Bolton said — however, this vision was not clear from the start.

“I didn’t have a plan B,” Bolton told Vogue on coming up with a new theme after Galliano’s decision to drop out as honoree this past August.

“I wanted it to be as challenging and as provocative and as beautiful as a John show would have been,” he said, adding that he wanted to design an exhibit that wasn’t merely a “substitute” to mend the uncertainty of the event.

According to The New York Times, public criticism of the Met Museum’s decision to celebrate Galliano had been mounting just days before the designer backed out of the exhibit. On Friday, Aug. 28, the outlet reported that Met trustees and board members were considering moving the date of the next Met Gala from the traditional first Monday in May to the week after. In 2027, Yom HaShoah, also known as Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, will fall on the scheduled Met Gala date on May, 3, 2027.

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When going back to the drawing board, Bolton looked to this May’s theme, “Costume Art,” which was highlighted by Met Gala co-chairs Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour and examined the relationship between fashion and the body. “I suppose it led me to think more about how we experience clothing in everyday life through habit and touch and movement and sensation.”

Among the sections featured in “extraORDINARY” will be “Familiar Forms,” which, per Vogue, “will look more closely at designers’ interventions of common items,” including pieces by the late Virgil Abloh, Jonathan Anderson for Loewe, Pierpaolo Piccioli’s collections for Moncler and designs from Burberry. “Common Matter” will explore “the potential of throwaway materials and found objects as actual garments.”

Overall, the exhibit poses the questions: “what do we overlook, what do we discard, what makes something worth keeping?” as shared by Bolton.

“I think that fashion is so often associated with the pursuit of the new and the ephemeral that I’m really interested in how possibilities can emerge through returning to familiar things. I think there’s something hopeful about discovering how much imagination the everyday can hold.”

No dress code has been announced for the Met Gala, but Bolton shared what he hopes everyday visitors will wear to the exhibit. Wrote Vogue, “he likes the idea of people wearing ‘their favorite t-shirt or their favorite pair of jeans or their favorite hoodie’ as they navigate their way through the show.” Said Bolton, “There’ll be a humanity to it.”

News of the upcoming exhibit, which will run from May 9, 2027, through January 9, 2028, comes two months after Galliano addressed his decision to step away from next year’s Met Gala.

“I am profoundly grateful to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and particularly to Max Hollein, Andrew Bolton, and Anna Wintour, for the extraordinary honour of proposing an exhibition devoted to my work,” Galliano said at the time, per Vogue.

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“After much reflection and discussion with The Met and all those involved, I have decided, with great sadness, that it is best for the exhibition not to take place at this time,” he added. “I remain fully accountable for the pain caused by my words in the past, particularly the hurt I caused to the Jewish and Asian communities, and I remain deeply sorry for it. I understand that meaningful atonement is not achieved through an exhibition, institutional recognition or a single public gesture. It is a continuing responsibility, demonstrated through listening, learning and one’s conduct over time.”

“I do not want the debate surrounding me to place The Met in a difficult position or to distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute. I also recognize and respect that an exhibition honouring my work would be painful for some,” he continued.

Despite Galliano — who was first named to be one of the only three living designers to be honored with their own exhibit on July 31 — becoming one of the couture fashion industry’s most influential names and visionaries throughout the ‘90s and early ‘00s, he upended his career in 2011 following a string of antisemitic and racist incidents, including the infamous video in which he professed his love for Hitler at a restaurant in Paris. Following his multiple outbursts, Galliano was convicted of committing two hate crimes in Paris and faced a fine equivalent to $8,500.

In Kevin Macdonald’s 2024 documentary, High & Low — John Galliano, which includes footage of the two attacks, Galliano admitted: “It was a disgusting thing, foul thing that I did. It was just horrific.”

Reflecting on the events, the designer, who was born in the British territory of Gibraltar, added, “I can say I’m not racist, but every day you actually learn that all of us are a bit. But we just need to unlearn it and like immigrants. I am one. I was one.”

In the statement, Wintour, who has co-chaired the Met Gala since 1995, said, “John’s decision to ask the Museum to postpone the exhibition devoted to his work is very courageous and a measure of the man he is. I believe this is the right decision, and both he and the Museum have my full support.”

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