The Costume Institute announced its 2027 exhibition on July 31, and the subject is John Galliano. It is titled John Galliano: Horizons, opens on May 9, 2027, and runs until January 9, 2028, with the Met Gala marking the opening as it does every year.

A rare choice of subject

Honouring a designer who is still working is close to unheard of at the Costume Institute. It has happened twice, with Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo in 2017. Galliano is the third.

What the show covers

The span runs from the graduate collection he showed as a Central Saint Martins student in the 1980s through to the artisanal collection he presented for Maison Margiela in spring 2024, which closes the exhibition. He left that house later the same year. Between those two points sit the Givenchy years, brief and widely admired, and the long Dior period that built his reputation.

What goes on display reaches past finished clothes. The museum lists accessories, sketches, toiles, research books and archival material, which suggests an interest in how the collections were arrived at rather than only in how they looked on a runway.

The part most retrospectives would skip

Galliano was dismissed from Dior and from his own label in 2011 over antisemitic, racist and anti-Asian conduct. Rather than leave it out, the curators have built it into the architecture of the show, which is divided into three sections called Bearings, Horizons and Atlas of Transformation. The first of them deals with the dismissal directly.

Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Costume Institute, framed the show as a piece of cartography rather than a retrospective. “Every Galliano collection begins as a journey among things separated by time, place, or medium,” he said in the announcement, describing an exhibition that maps affinities and tensions instead of territories. He also indicated that it would set what Galliano remade in fashion against the way his behaviour, everything that followed from it, and shifting public values have altered how the work now reads.

What it means for the carpet

Galliano designs have a long history at the gala itself. Kim Kardashian and Zendaya have both worn his work up the steps. A themed year sends stylists straight into the archive, so expect a heavy showing of Dior era couture and Margiela artisanal pieces on the night in May 2027.