Announced today, “John Galliano: Horizons,” the spring 2027 exhibition at the Costume Institute, will examine and exalt the work of John Galliano. In the history of The Met, only two other living designers have been the subject of monographs. The first was Yves Saint Laurent in 1983, organized by Diana Vreeland; the second was Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons in 2017.
Galliano has been widely considered one of fashion’s greats since his 1984 Central Saint Martins graduation collection Les Incroyables. An exuberant pastiche of turn-of-the-18th century historical dress with his own New Romantic leanings, it was snapped up in its entirety by the British department store Browns. “Horizons,” which was organized by Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute Andrew Bolton, draws extensively from its own considerable holdings, including pieces from that breakout show. The other garments, accessories, sketches, toiles, research books, and archival materials in the exhibition span his years as a scrappy London upstart and enfant terrible, when he divined sartorial magic from the merest scraps; his formative appointment at Givenchy; his phenomenal success and, later, dramatic downfall at Christian Dior; and his genius reinvention of Maison Margiela, in which, as his successor Glenn Martens has said, “he really turned a designer’s brand into a house,” and, with his final, triumphant Artisanal collection for the label, a viral phenomenon.
“Every Galliano collection begins as a journey among things separated by time, place, or medium: portrait and posture, silhouette and story, memory and material,” Bolton said in a release. “‘Horizons’ approaches fashion as a form of cartography, mapping not territories but affinities, tensions, and transformations. It traces how images become ideas, ideas become material, and material becomes emotion. Yet a horizon reveals not only what lies before us,” Bolton went on, “but also where we stand. The exhibition therefore considers both how Galliano has remapped the world through fashion and how his conduct, its consequences, and changing cultural values have reshaped our understanding of his work.”
DREAM CATCHER
Galliano—seen with his Brussels Griffon terriers Coco and Gypsy—worked with the landscape designer Camille Muller on the house’s English-inspired garden, which is punctuated by a small lily pond.Photographed by François Halard, Vogue, December 2021
