Met Museum swaps Galliano retrospective for show on everyday clothing
Curator Andrew Bolton announces a new exhibit focusing on jeans, puffers, and common materials after the original spring show was canceled amid criticism of the British designer.
By Dominic Foster ·
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has replaced its planned spring 2027 retrospective on John Galliano with an exhibition focused on ordinary garments and materials.
The new show, titled “extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday,” will feature items such as jeans, puffer jackets, paper, and plastic. The Costume Institute aims to examine how designers transform these familiar objects through craft and conceptual design.
Andrew Bolton, the institute’s head curator, confirmed the theme on Thursday. The decision follows the cancellation of the Galliano show, which was announced in late July 2026 but scrapped a month later due to pressure from donors, city officials, and the Jewish community.
Bolton described the shift as a necessity rather than a pre-planned alternative. “I had no Plan B, to be honest,” he said in an interview this week. “There wasn’t another exhibition already researched and ready to go.” He noted that the new concept had been forming while he worked on last year’s exhibit, “Costume Art,” but remained an abstract idea until the cancellation forced it forward.
The original Galliano exhibition was intended to address the designer’s past antisemitic and racist statements directly. The museum had promised to confront the “derogatory conduct that fundamentally altered his career and public reception.” Instead, the new show will draw about one-third of its items from the museum’s collection, with the rest sourced from loans and designer gifts.
Among the loans is a 1930s puffer coat by Charles James from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The exhibit will also include a “sleeping bag coat” by Norma Kamali. Designers are contributing pieces to mark the Costume Institute’s 80th anniversary next year, a move Bolton said will help diversify the collection.
The show includes the Calvin Klein jeans worn by Brooke Shields in her famous 1981 ad campaign. She has loaned the garment to the museum, adding a layer of cultural history to the display. The exhibit aims to make visitors reflect on the meaning embedded in their daily wear, such as favorite T-shirts or worn-out jeans.
New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, a critic of the original Galliano plan, supported the cancellation. She noted that the 2027 Met Gala, scheduled for May 3, would have coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day. Menin, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, called the decision “the correct decision, as the harm and pain this was causing was simply unacceptable.”
Galliano, who was creative director of Christian Dior before his 2011 firing and subsequent conviction in France, has maintained a public presence since his 2014 return to fashion with Maison Margiela. In a statement upon the exhibit’s cancellation, he said he remains “fully accountable for the pain caused by my words in the past, particularly the hurt I caused to the Jewish and Asian communities.”
Anna Wintour, Vogue’s global editorial director and a longtime supporter of Galliano, praised his decision to withdraw the show. The Met Gala, which launches the exhibit, will have its hosts and dress code announced at a later date. The event traditionally takes place on the first Monday in May, and this year’s date falls on May 3, 2027.
