A pair of jeans, a white shirt, a puffer coat: familiar wardrobe staples will take center stage in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s next fashion exhibition. How designers transform them is the subject of extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday, opening May 9, 2027.

The announcement follows the cancellation of the planned Galliano exhibit in August, after objections to honoring the designer over his past antisemitic statements. The controversy overshadowed preparations for fashion’s biggest night, leaving the museum to rethink its spring show.

In contrast to Galliano’s theatrical universe, the new exhibit turns to everyday clothes and the creativity that transforms them. The shift from drama to daily life also feels current: for people who love fashion, getting dressed is an opportunity to feel special every day, as Costume Institute Curator Andrew Bolton explains, “The ordinary is never quite as simple as it appears. A pair of jeans, a white shirt, or a sweatshirt can hold traces of a life, the habits, memories, and attachments that make something our own.”

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Among the brands and designers showcased, several Italian names illustrate different approaches to that transformation. In Matthieu Blazy’s jeans for Bottega Veneta, what looks like denim is actually leather. The illusion asks viewers to look again and discover the craftsmanship beneath something they thought they already recognized. A 2006 shirt by the iconic Italian Couturier Gianfranco Ferré approaches the familiar through construction and proportion. Pierpaolo Piccioli brings couture volume to the puffer jacket for Moncler, an exhibit co-sponsor. An earlier interpretation will also be on display: Charles James’s 1930s couture puffer coat.

Brooke Shields’s Calvin Klein jeans, the ones from the famous advertising campaign, will also be featured, alongside pieces from Marc Jacobs’s 1990s grunge collection for Perry Ellis, Jonathan Anderson’s take on the trench coat for Loewe, and Junya Watanabe’s reworking of the biker jacket.

The exhibition’s two main sections will explore reinvented wardrobe staples and clothes made from paper, plastic, metal and found objects, including cutlery and broken china. Reuse and reconstruction will connect the two.

The Met Gala will take place on May 3. The exhibition opens to the public six days later and runs through January 9, 2028. Visitors will arrive wearing their own versions of its subject: clothes made personal through use, attachment, and the daily act of choosing what to wear.