The Met Gala 2027 has a new theme And it's about the clothes we wear every day
After the entire John Galliano debacle, to which the next Met Gala was supposed to be dedicated, sparking a controversy that ended with the cancellation of the exhibition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the theme of the new exhibition it will organize and share with the 2027 Met Gala: the title will be extraOrdinary: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday, and it will take place on May 3. In short, the next Met Gala will be about the beauty of everyday clothing. The exhibition is expected, in other words, to be about normcore. Another surprising piece of news: Anna Wintour played no part in selecting the exhibition.
Vanessa Friedman and Jacob Bernstein speculate, in the pages of the New York Times, that the exhibition and the gala will center on everyday garments such as jeans, t-shirts, and puffer jackets, re-imagined through the lens of fashion. A theme that perhaps leaves one somewhat puzzled, for two reasons: the first, and most obvious, is that the chosen theme, while interesting, seems deliberately neutral — inert in the face of controversy, not particularly divisive and, therefore, not especially culturally "charged"; the second is that this theme would have felt more at home in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, when the entire Western world was trying to figure out how to re-enter society after months spent in hoodies and slippers.
But the exhibition could have some interesting angles. "I wanted an exhibition that I felt had something new to say, and that I felt was relevant to different conversations," said Andrew Bolton, the Met's curator. "I committed myself to this really quickly because it brings up ideas of value and consumption and resourcefulness and makes us question what we overlook and what we discard." Among the evening's sponsors will be Instagram, Moncler, and Condé Nast.
Among the pieces featured in the exhibition will be the iconic grunge collection by Marc Jacobs for Perry Ellis, the Calvin Klein jeans from "that" advertisement with Brooke Shields, as well as a proto-puffer jacket from the 1930s by Charles James, along with the famous trompe-l'oeil jeans by Bottega Veneta by Mathieu Blazy and the distorted leather jackets of Junya Watanabe. Some 20–30% of the garments on display will also come from the museum's own collection. Another (unfortunate) detail revealed by the New York Times is that the exhibition will have no catalogue. But can there really be an "informal" Met Gala — for the stars, the designers, and even the audience at home?
