The Met Gala Is Getting A New Theme

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — After the Metropolitan Museum of Art canceled its exhibit dedicated to designer John Galliano over backlash in August, a new theme for the annual show — which will become the high fashion dress code for the Met Gala — has been decided.

The new exhibit, "extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday " will highlight everyday basics like jeans, T-shirts, hoodies, trench coats and puffer jackets, as well as designs made with paper, plastic and metal.

The exhibit, which will run from May 9, 2027, through Jan. 9, 2028, will bring together pieces from the institute’s collection, loans and new acquisitions to show how designers remake familiar clothes and commonplace materials.

For the Met Gala, think high fashion-meets-commonplace materials.

"By bringing together works that begin with the clothes, objects, and materials of daily life, extraORDINARY invites visitors to discover the creativity and ingenuity in things they encounter every day," said Max Hollein, the museum’s director and chief executive officer.

When the Galliano theme was first announced, donors, advocates and Council Speaker Julie Menin urged the local institution to reconsider honoring a man with a record of racist and antisemitic outbursts.

Galliano is a British fashion designer who led Dior from 1996 to 2011, and Maison Margiela from 2014 to 2024, both to critical acclaim.

However, in 2011, he was fired from Dior after videos surfaced showing him praising Adolf Hitler and using an anti-Asian slur, and he was later convicted in France for making racist and antisemitic public insults.

Galliano's extensive work was meant to be the theme of this year's Costume Institute exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, an honor that only two other designers have ever received.

Though an exhibit could have acknowledged the designer's history, the Met Gala would have been a de facto celebration of the designer, which Menin called "wholly inappropriate."

"Words matter, and whom we choose to elevate is a direct statement of our values and what we are willing to tolerate," Menin wrote in a letter to the museum on Aug. 26.

For the reimagined exhibit, the Met will view ordinary clothes through a high-fashion lens, including featured works like a 1993 flannel shirt by Marc Jacobs for Perry Ellis, a 2011–12 biker jacket by Junya Watanabe and a 2027 dress by Glenn Martens for Maison Margiela.

However, ordinary doesn't mean simple, Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Costume Institute, said.

"A pair of jeans, a white shirt, or a sweatshirt can hold traces of a life—the habits, memories, and attachments that make something our own. Designers work with that familiarity, revealing unexpected possibilities within forms and materials we think we already know," Bolton said. "The exhibition invites us to discover how much imagination the everyday can hold, and how looking again might change what we value and care for."

For questions, email Miranda.Levingston@Patch.com.