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The National Gallery of Victoria has announced the most unlikely fashion collaboration since Karl Lagerfeld and Diet Coke for its upcoming summer blockbuster, Westwood|Kawakubo.
Organisers are adamant that the double billing of Dame Vivienne Westwood, who died in 2022, and Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo, 82, is not a downgrade from the solo spotlight given to Coco Chanel, Alexander McQueen and Jean Paul Gaultier at previous NGV summer blockbusters. Showing Westwood’s corsets and mini-crinis alongside Kawakubo’s abstract explorations is a clash worthy of both designers’ punk origins.
Vivienne Westwood arriving to receive her CBE in 1992 and Rei Kawakubo in Paris in 2017.Credit: Getty Images
“It is unusual for us to do this in the context of a fashion exhibition, but the NGV has established a tradition of these pairings with a series of exhibitions like Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei (2015) and Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat (2019),” says NGV senior fashion curator Katie Somerville.
“What is exciting is that we finally get to do it focusing on fashion designers. It’s also exciting that it’s the first time we’ve done one of these pairings with women.”
Last year’s Yayoi Kusama summer blockbuster attracted 570,537 visitors, making it the most visited ticketed exhibition ever staged in the gallery’s history. The Westwood|Kawakubo exhibition, opening December 7, features Westwood dresses worn by Kate Moss on the Paris runway and by Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City: The Movie, along with more than 40 works recently donated by Kawakubo to the NGV.
Dresses will be loaned from New York’s Metropolitan Museum, The Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Palais Galliera in Paris, and the Vivienne Westwood archive, shown alongside the NGV’s extensive collection. Westwood and Kawakubo’s work will be presented side by side in themes such as Punk and Provocation, Rupture and Reinvention.
“I think the comparison of designers should be done much more often because it reveals more unexpected things,” says US fashion historian Valerie Steele, who contributed to the exhibition catalogue.
“The problem with single-person exhibitions is that they tend to be hagiographies controlled by the designer or the house.”
“These are two of the most important designers of our era, and it is still, sadly, unusual to have women designers be as important and influential as male designers.”
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Both self-taught, Kawakubo and Westwood overcame dismissive reactions to their early collections from conservative corners of the fashion industry to become industry forces.
Westwood courted the media, with outrageous stunts such as twirling her skirt when she received her OBE in 1992 to reveal a no-knickers approach to formality. Kawakubo prefers to let her work speak for itself.
The designers did collaborate on a collection for autumn/winter 2002/03, before designer team-ups were regular features at H&M and Target.
“It was a moment of collaboration and coming together, which only comes about when you genuinely respect someone else’s work,” Somerville says.
“We just don’t have any in the show. If you have any, feel free to get in touch.”
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