The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced a new theme for the 2027 Met Gala. The event will be titled “extraoRDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday.” This exhibition explores how designers transform everyday clothes and materials into unexpected creations. The announcement was made on November 5. It follows the museum’s cancellation of a planned John Galliano retrospective more than two months earlier.
The New Exhibition Focuses on Common Materials
The 2027 exhibition will examine how designers rethink familiar pieces, including jeans, T-shirts, hoodies, trench coats, and puffers, as well as how they turn materials such as paper, plastic, and metal into clothing. The exhibition will also consider how wearing, styling, and caring for clothes gives them meaning over time. Recycling, upcycling, and reuse will be recurring subjects throughout.
The Canceled Galliano Retrospective
The Met had originally planned a John Galliano exhibition for 2027. The show, titled “John Galliano: Horizons,” was announced on July 31. It aimed to examine the designer’s four-decade career. Galliano was fired from Dior in 2011 after videos surfaced of him making antisemitic and racist remarks. He was later convicted of a hate crime in France. The exhibition was intended to confront this history, which the curator called “the rupture.”
Backlash against the Galliano show grew throughout August. City Council Speaker Julie Menin called the decision a “serious mistake.” Pressure also mounted because the original gala date, May 3, 2027, falls on Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Reports also suggested Galliano made antisemitic remarks as recently as 2019. After an emergency meeting on August 30, the Met and Galliano jointly announced the exhibition would not proceed. Met director Max Hollein stated they had “together decided not to proceed.” Galliano said he remains “fully accountable for the pain caused by my words.”
The 2027 Met Gala is scheduled for Monday, May 3, 2027, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition itself will open to the public on May 9, 2027, and run through January 9, 2028. As of November 5, the gala’s co-chairs, host committee, guest list, and official dress code have not been announced. The Met says more event details will follow, along with information about exhibition-related public programs in 2027.
