Two months after causing public outcry for planning a 2027 Met Gala exhibit centered on John Galliano, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced a new theme: Dressing down.
Next May, “ExtraOrdinary: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday” will explore the artistic craft behind the kind of mundane garments we live our lives in, like jeans and T-shirts. There will also be clothes constructed literally from common materials like paper and plastic, as well as nods to the luxury fashion designers who have embraced or subverted fashions’ timeless staples — such as a leather biker jacket from avant-garde Japanese designer Junya Watanabe, Pierpaolo Piccioli’s puffer coat ball gowns made with Moncler, or the “I can’t believe it’s not denim” Bottega Veneta pieces that first brought Matthieu Blazy acclaim. “The ordinary is never quite as simple as it seems,” The Costume Institute’s lead curator Andrew Bolton said in a press statement.
