extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday

The Costume Institute’s spring 2027 exhibition will explore how designers transform familiar garments, materials, and objects, inviting visitors to see them anew.

Bringing together works from The Costume Institute’s collection with key loans and new acquisitions, the exhibition will examine how craft, construction, material experimentation, and conceptual wit give these ordinary forms extraordinary possibilities. Even through radical transformations, their original functions, histories, and associations remain part of what gives the designs meaning.

From jeans, T-shirts, and puffer coats to paper, plastic, and metal, the exhibition will reveal how the seemingly unremarkable can inspire delight, surprise, and wonder. It will also consider how meaning develops through use and care.

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