Two era-defining avant garde fashion designers, Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo, will be brought together in a blockbuster summer exhibition announced on Tuesday by the National Gallery of Victoria.
It has been more than 20 years since Westwood’s work has been exhibited extensively in Australia, and the NGV show will be the first since the designer’s death in December 2023.
Linda Evangelista in a Vivienne Westwood design from 1996. Photograph: Images Press/Getty Images
Curated by the NGV, with works drawn from the museum’s extensive fashion collection supplemented by loans from the Metropolitan Museum, the V&A and others, Westwood | Kawakubo will open in Melbourne on 7 December.
Westwood came to prominence as the designer behind the tattered, torn and often obscene garments of London’s 1970s punk scene, before moving towards irreverent but historically grounded tailoring and corsetry in the early 1980s. Later her climate activism became a critical component of her life and work.
Rihanna in Comme des Garçons at the 2017 Met Gala. Photograph: Daniele Venturelli/WireImage
After establishing Comme des Garçons in her native Japan, Kawakubo appalled the fashion establishment when she began showing in Paris in 1981. Her deconstructed and distressed designs won her a fervent underground fanbase and, with the hindsight of history, they have gained critical approval too. In 2017 Kawakubo was the subject of a rare standalone exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum; it was only the second time the Costume Institute had run an exhibition of a living designer, the first being Yves Saint Laurent in 1983.
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Katie Somerville, the NGV’s senior curator of fashion and textiles and the exhibition’s co-curator, says while Westwood and Kawakubo’s works are aesthetically distinct, there is “a lovely symmetry” in the designers’ lives and practices. Both designers were self-taught and they were born a year apart. They also built businesses in an industry that was, and remains, male-dominated in its upper echelons.
When planning the exhibition, Somerville researched whether the pairing had ever been made before, “and no one had”, she says. “So that’s always a really exciting space to be in … when you can present an exhibition concept that does break new ground.”
Katie Somerville, senior curator, fashion and textiles, at the NGV poses with a 1987 Vivienne Westwood ensemble. Photograph: Eugene Hyland/National Gallery Victoria
Rather than a chronological retrospective, the exhibition will be curated thematically, with rooms devoted to punk, the designers’ engagement with the body and their historical influences.
More than 140 works will be on display, including early-career punk ensembles by Westwood, alongside a tartan gown worn by Kate Moss in the designer’s 1993-94 Anglomania collection. From Comme des Garçons there will be a custom dress worn by Rihanna to the 2017 Met Gala and 40 garments donated by Kawakubo for the exhibition.
The NGV has become known for its double-bill blockbusters, including Warhol | Ai Weiwei and Keith Haring/Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines. Westwood | Kawakubo will be the first fashion pairing and the first to feature female artists. “I think when you bring two individual artists together … [there are] wonderful new ways of seeing their work that come out of that comparison,” Somerville says.
“We’re not for a minute saying that they’re the same or similar, but there’s enough there that connects them to make that sort of back and forth of looking at their work together … really exciting and productive.”