The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday as the theme of its 2027 Costume Institute exhibition and Met Gala. The exhibition will examine how designers transform familiar clothing and everyday materials into fashion, from jeans and white shirts to garments constructed using paper, plastic and metal.
The Met Gala will take place in New York on Monday 3 May 2027, with the exhibition opening to the public on 9 May and running until 9 January 2028. Organised by Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Costume Institute, the exhibition will bring together pieces from the museum’s collection alongside loans and new acquisitions.
The announcement follows the cancellation of a planned retrospective dedicated to John Galliano, which faced criticism over the designer’s history of antisemitic and racist remarks. The new exhibition takes a broader approach, examining the relationship between fashion, familiar objects and the ways clothing acquires meaning through everyday use.
How the Exhibition Will Explore Everyday Fashion
The exhibition will open with garments from Jun Takahashi’s autumn/winter 2024–25 Undercover collection, Watching a Working Woman. Inspired in part by Wim Wenders’s 2023 film Perfect Days, the collection combined and layered familiar garments to explore the overlapping responsibilities and identities of everyday life.
The exhibition will then be divided into two principal sections, Familiar Forms and Common Matter.
Familiar Forms will examine how designers reinterpret established wardrobe pieces, including jeans, T-shirts, hoodies, biker jackets, trench coats and puffer jackets. Through changes in construction, proportion and materials, the section will consider how practical clothing can become a vehicle for creative expression.
Among the works included are Matthieu Blazy’s 2022–23 jeans for Bottega Veneta, a flannel shirt from Marc Jacobs’s influential 1993 Perry Ellis collection, a biker jacket by Junya Watanabe and designs by Jonathan Anderson for Loewe and Pierpaolo Piccioli for Moncler. The selection illustrates how designers have challenged the appearance and purpose of garments originally associated with workwear, casual dressing and protection.
Common Matter will focus on clothing created from commonplace materials and found objects. Paper, plastic and metal will form the section’s three central groupings, alongside designs incorporating objects such as cutlery, broken china and buttons.
The section will feature a 1992 dress by Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, a 1992–93 ensemble by Martin Margiela, a 2003 jacket by Helmut Lang and a 1998–99 ensemble by Issey Miyake. A 2027 dress by Glenn Martens for Maison Margiela will also be included. Together, these works will demonstrate how designers use construction and craftsmanship to transform materials that might otherwise be overlooked or discarded.
Recycling, upcycling and reuse will be recurring subjects throughout the exhibition, raising questions about consumption, craftsmanship and how the value of clothing changes over time.
The final gallery will feature work by Kunihiko Morinaga for Anrealage, exploring garments constructed around geometric forms such as cubes, spheres and pyramids. By changing the relationship between clothing and the human body, the designs challenge conventional assumptions about fit and proportion.
What the Theme Means for the 2027 Met Gala
The exhibition provides the creative context for the 2027 Met Gala, although the event’s official dress code has not yet been announced. The distinction is important: the exhibition theme establishes the subject of the Costume Institute’s presentation, while the dress code will provide more specific guidance for guests attending the fundraiser.
An example of fashion’s reinterpretation of everyday clothing appeared at the 2026 Met Gala, when model Bhavitha Mandava wore a custom Chanel look designed by Matthieu Blazy. What appeared to be a simple quarter-zip top and blue jeans was a couture interpretation of casual dressing, with a sheer muslin blouse and silk muslin trousers printed to resemble denim.
The look was a reinterpretation of the outfit Mandava wore when she opened Chanel’s Métiers d’Art show in New York in December 2025. Its transformation from a familiar streetwear silhouette into a couture ensemble reflects the kind of material experimentation that will be examined in the 2027 exhibition, although it was created for the previous year’s event.
While Mandava’s look provides a relevant example, the official 2027 Met Gala dress code and co-chairs have yet to be announced. Further details are expected from the museum.
extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday will be open to the public at The Met Fifth Avenue from 9 May 2027 until 9 January 2028.
