Met Museum drops Galliano for a 2027 gala on plain clothes
The Costume Institute will focus on blue jeans and plain T-shirts after the British designer stepped down due to backlash over past comments.
By Julia Wang ·
The Metropolitan Museum of Art replaced its planned John Galliano retrospective with a focus on ordinary clothing just one month after announcing the designer as the 2027 subject. The new theme, “extraOrdinary: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday,” directs attention to blue jeans, white T-shirts, and other common garments reimagined through high fashion.
The change follows intense criticism of Galliano’s 2011 antisemitic and racist remarks. Public officials and museum donors pushed for the cancellation, forcing the institution and the British designer to part ways. The decision arrived quickly despite the fact that curators had already completed significant work on the original “Horizons” exhibition.
Galliano acknowledged the pressure in a statement published on Instagram. He wrote that he did not want the debate surrounding him to place the Met in a difficult position or distract from the Costume Institute’s work. He also noted that an exhibition honoring his work would be painful for some people.
Anna Wintour, the event’s longtime director and a personal friend of Galliano, supported the move. In her own statement, she called the designer’s decision “courageous” and “the right decision.”
According to Page Six sources, themes for the gala are typically solidified one year in advance. The rapid shift means the Costume Institute must now pivot its planning to center on the poetics of the everyday rather than a single designer’s career.
