Fashion’s biggest night, the annual Met Gala, officially has a new theme for 2027. The announcement comes after an exhibit on controversial designer John Galliano was canceled earlier this year.
The new theme for the star-studded event, held each spring on the first Monday of May, will be “extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday,” Vogue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute announced Thursday.
The exhibition will explore how designers transform familiar garments and commonplace materials, inviting visitors to see the everyday anew. It will also consider how wearing, styling and caring for these everyday items shapes their significance over time.
“Fashion offers an immediate and compelling way to look at the world,” said Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “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. Combining The Costume Institute’s holdings with important loans and new acquisitions, the exhibition reveals the rich relationship between fashion, art, and everyday experience.”
Condé Nast Chief Content Officer Anna Wintour will continue to serve as chair for this year’s event. Other celebrity hosts have not yet been announced.
“The ordinary is never quite as simple as it appears,” said Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute. “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. 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.”
The change in theme comes after the benefits original theme “John Galliano: Horizons,” was met with backlash when it was announced in late July because of Galliano’s history of antisemitic remarks.
In 2011, Galliano was fired as the creative director of Christian Dior and was found guilty of antisemitic behavior by a French court later that same year. He was later sentenced to an $8,400 suspended fine for verbally abusing an English language teacher and two others in separate incidents at a restaurant in Paris.
Galliano released a statement after the original theme was scrapped, writing, “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.”
He continued, “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 honoring my work would be painful for some.”
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