Two months after scrapping its John Galliano exhibition, the Met's Costume Institute is pivoting hard—to the ordinary. The new spring show is titled "extraOrdinary: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday," and it's all about bluejeans, puffer jackets, and white T-shirts, even paper, plastic, and Bubble Wrap, reimagined through high fashion.
On the surface, that sounds deliberately uncontentious—a clear break from the Galliano show, which sparked a firestorm after The New York Times revealed it. Donors balked at the designer's history of antisemitic remarks, and Galliano withdrew in late August. The episode was also a PR mess for Anna Wintour, whose longtime support of Galliano raised eyebrows about donor influence over programming decisions.
Curator Andrew Bolton, speaking publicly for the first time since, called the cancellation "disappointing for everyone involved." In its place, he said, "I wanted an exhibition that I felt had something new to say... it brings up ideas of value and consumption and resourcefulness and makes us question what we overlook and what we discard." He insisted it wasn't a Plan B—he never had one—and that working on something new was "a nice way of taking my mind off things," even if the timetable was tight.
Everyday Pieces Reimagined Through High Fashion
The show will feature 200 to 230 pieces, roughly 30 to 40 percent from the museum's own collection. Expect Charles James's 1930s couture puffer coat, Marc Jacobs's 1990s Perry Ellis grunge, and Brooke Shields's Calvin Klein jeans from that ad. Bolton acknowledged the obvious tension: turning a flannel shirt into cashmere makes it fabulous—and inaccessible. "That will be addressed in the exhibition for sure," he said.
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