NGV celebrates legendary fashion disrupters Westwood and Kawakubo
The NGV is hosting a historic exhibition highlighting the revolutionary contributions of Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo to global fashion.
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PUNK. Provocation. Anarchy. Visionaries and revolutionaries.
The NGV announced on Tuesday it is taking on two of the world’s most famous female fashion disrupters for its summer blockbuster Westwood/Kawakubo.
Breaking all the rules, it marks a world first for the two designers and iconoclasts of the fashion world, with Vivienne Westwood and Comme des Garcon’s Rei Kawakubo to be displayed together in a major exhibition.
The National Gallery of Victoria has become a renowned and respected global leader for its fashion archive collected over several decades. Many of the 140 plus innovative designs and groundbreaking works from the UK and Japanese fashion innovators are drawn from its own collection.
But there are others.
Think the original version of the corsetted ivory duchess silk wedding dress worn by Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw in the Sex and the City: The Movie from Westwood’s Wake Up Cave Girl 2007 autumn winter collection.
Iconic bondage trousers from Westwood’s British punk era in the 70s and her famous provocative anarchist muslin slogan shirts.
A tartan ballgown worn by Kate Moss in the runway, or the towering bright blue imitation crocodile skin platforms worn by supermodel Naomi Campbell when she famously tumbled from Westwood’s famed Anglomania show in 1993.
Not to mention 40 yet to be seen outstanding recently gifted pieces to the NGV by Comme des Garcons, selected by Kawakubo herself. One highlight is an avant-garde showstopper Rihanna wore to the Met Gala in 2017 for the theme Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between.
Exhibiting two female artists and designers for the first time for what is often the most popular and highly anticipated exhibition of the calendar is not lost on curator Katie Somerville. It is two women who conceived the idea and have brought this concept to life, working secretly on the daunting project with her fellow colleague, senior curator of fashion and textiles Danielle Whitfield.
“It is exciting and nerve-racking to conceive of something. Right through that early stage you’re still testing the ideas and trying to figure out what works and what stories you want to tell. But it’s safe to say we’re at the point to feel so excited to deliver this exhibition,” Somerville said.
And what stories there are to tell.
Westwood, who died a Dame in December 2022 just prior to the exhibition’s conception, was a true pioneer.
Considered by many as the creator of punk, working with Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren from their UK shop from the early 1970s, she practised what she preached.
She famously wore no knickers when she met the queen in 1992. Waiting paparazzi knew this because they gave them a cheeky twirl and a wink outside Buckingham Palace. Westwood liked to say she dressed heroes, with her transgressive always progressive empowered feminine pieces later adorned and loved by everyone from Pamela Anderson, Kate Moss to Kylie Minogue.
“Anyone who wants to feel romantic about themselves. If you ever wished you were 6 feet tall and you weren’t, you just wear some of my clothes and that’s what you’ll feel like,” Westwood famously said.
The success of the NGV’s significant collaborative exhibitions, by pairing and exploring the scope of two artists work, think Andy Warhol – Ai Weiwei in 2015, to Keith Haring – Jean Michel Basquiat in 2019, has proved immensely popular. But Somerville was painfully aware the gallery had never focused on two women, or two designers.
“It’s obviously a very established model to focus on one designer at a time and to look across their whole career, but something really quite magical and very interesting comes about when you put the two designers together,” she said.
Born a year apart in different countries and cultural contexts, each brought a rule-breaking radicalism to fashion design that subverted the status quo.
“There are uncanny similarities in that they were born a year apart, they were obviously born in very different places culturally speaking, but their careers span a very similar time period and they’re both completely self-taught.”
For over five decades Rei Kawakubo has defied convention to redefine fashion. Born in Japan and the founder of Comme des Garcons she is considered one of the most visionary and influential designers, refining beauty and subverting garment shape and function.
“I never intended to start a revolution. I only came to Paris with the intention of showing what I thought was strong and beautiful. It just so happened that my notion was different from everybody else’s,” the designer previously said.
Today, their critically acclaimed collections are celebrated globally for questioning conventions of taste, gender and beauty, as well as challenging the very form and function of clothing. The exhibition will examine the intersections of their practices and how they changed the fashion landscape in their own ways.
“There’s endless arguments about exactly when punk started and where and who,” Somerville said. “But they’ve picked up on something, an idea or a sort of feeling that had power and potency and became something that starts I suppose a bit more underground. But ultimately the kind of the things that we think of with punk now, from the materials used and the sort of cuts and the silhouettes and the sort of slogans are actually so mainstream now in a really interesting way very relatable for people. Particularly at this moment where one way or the other people are pushing back against the status quo or having grievances with politicians, or the commercial system, or the banks or whatever it might be. There’s that sense of nonconformity and having a voice.”
On Tuesday NGV director Tony Ellwood announced the summer blockbuster working with the Victorian government.’
“This exhibition celebrates two leading female fashion designers from different cultural backgrounds, who both had strong creative spirits and pushed boundaries. Through more than 140 designs from the NGV Collection and key international loans,” Elwood said.
“We’re indebted to the donors who have helped the NGV to acquire key works by both Westwood and Kawakubo.”
Westwood | Kawakubo will be on display from 7 December 2025 to 19 April 2026
Originally published as NGV celebrates legendary fashion disrupters Westwood and Kawakubo
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