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The Metropolitan Museum of Art has cancelled its planned John Galliano retrospective, Horizons, which was due to open at the Costume Institute in May 2027 and serve as the theme of next year’s Met Gala. The exhibition drew backlash when announced in July because of Galliano’s history of making antisemitic remarks.
The show would have made him only the third living designer to receive a solo Costume Institute exhibition, after Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo in 2017.
“Horizons” was set to be the first major museum exhibition built entirely around Galliano’s career, running from 9 May 2027 to 9 January 2028, drawing on what the Met calls the largest institutional collection of his work anywhere. The curatorial arc ran from his 1984 graduation show at Central Saint Martins through his own label, his years at Givenchy and Christian Dior, and on to his decade at Maison Margiela, closing with the spring 2024 Artisanal collection.
The exhibition was to be organised into three sections: Bearings, Horizons, and Atlas of Transformation. The first placed his work in historical and cultural context before the show moved into his career survey proper.
One gallery, titled Atlas of Transformation, was designed to put his process on view alongside the finished looks themselves. Attendees would have glimpsed the behind-the-scenes process, including research books, sketches, toiles, and fitting notes. They could trace the journey from a single idea to the first sketch to the runway piece. The Met described the gallery as an attempt to reveal the creativity, craftsmanship, and technical innovation underpinning his work.
Individual pieces already had their moment written into the checklist. Nicole Kidman’s chartreuse silk slip dress for Dior, worn to the 1997 Oscars, was expected to anchor one section. The Egypt-inflected Dior Haute Collection from spring 2024 was another planned centrepiece. The newspaper-print mini dress Sarah Jessica Parker wore as Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City also made it to the lineup.
Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of The Met’s Costume Institute, and Max Hollein, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, each issued statements on Monday supporting the decision to shelve it. Met Trustee Anna Wintour, who championed the project from the start, said she backs both Galliano and the museum.
John Galliano left Maison Margiela at the end of 2024 after ten years as creative director, a decade Wallpaper described as “defined by voraciously creative collections and theatrical runway presentations.”
Reports at the time speculated he might land back at Dior, where his current successor, Jonathan Anderson, has cited him as a personal influence. That move didn’t happen. Glenn Martens, previously of Y/Project and Diesel, stepped into the Margiela role.
Galliano resurfaced in March 2026 with news of a two-year creative partnership with Zara, his first public project since leaving Margiela, with the first collection releasing this month. The arrangement gives him access to the retailer’s own seasonal archives, which he is deconstructing and reassembling into new pieces under his own creative direction. Zara will unveil a new collection every season through a two-year partnership.
“It’s not something I’ve done before, so that kind of tickles me, the newness, the excitement, the actual process,” he told Vogue, adding that working with a platform and resources on Zara’s scale was equally exciting. The project reportedly took shape through conversations with Marta Ortega Pérez, non-executive chairperson of Inditex, Zara’s parent company. It follows a run of collaborations the brand has struck with Ludovic de Saint Sernin, Narciso Rodriguez, Stefano Pilati, and Steven Meisel.
The Met has not said what will fill the spring 2027 slot “Horizons” was meant to occupy or what theme will replace it at next year’s Met Gala. We will have to wait for that announcement. One scheduling detail adds pressure to that timeline: reports indicate the museum had already been weighing a shift away from the Met Gala’s usual first Monday in May, since that date coincides with Yom HaShoah, Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day in 2027.
For now, the Costume Institute’s current exhibition remains “Costume Art,” which opened in May 2026 and pairs garments from its permanent collection with artworks drawn from across the wider museum, running through January 2027. Bolton has described that show as an attempt to foreground the materiality of fashion, setting garments with sculpture and painting. It was into that same spring slot, the following season, that “Horizons” had been due to arrive.
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