A blockbuster summer event for the The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Westwood | Kawakubo will be on show from December 2025 to April 2026. The exhibition will bring together the work of the two fashion labels and their iconic designers for the first time.
The show follows the huge success of last summer’s Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the NGV, which earned the title of most visited art exhibition in Australian history.
Born a year apart in different countries and cultural contexts, British designer Vivienne Westwood (1941 – 2022) and Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo (b. 1942) each made their mark in the fashion world over decades.
Vivienne Westwood’s brand officially began in 1971 when she and Malcolm McLaren started making clothes and opened a boutique in London, influencing the punk and new wave scene with their fashion designs. By the early 80s she was designing alone and continued at the helm of her globally popular, influential and irreverent fashion label until her death in 2022.
Rei Kawakubo Kawakubo was born in Tokyo and studied literature and fine art and worked as a stylist before beginning to dip into fashion design. She established Comme des Garçons in 1969 and the label became beloved around the world for combining intelligent design with conceptual and avant-garde leanings.
Though both designers approach was different stylistically, each bought a rule-breaking radicalism to fashion design that subverted the status quo.
‘This exhibition celebrates two leading female fashion designers from different cultural backgrounds, who both had strong creative spirits and pushed boundaries, says Tony Ellwood AM, NGV Director. “Westwood | Kawakubo invites audiences to reflect on the enduring legacies of these groundbreaking designers and contemplate the ways in which fashion can be a vehicle for self-expression and freedom.”
The exhibition will feature more than 140 designs, including loans from international museums and private collections as well as pieces from the NGV’s own collection. It includes nearly 40 outstanding works recently gifted to the NGV by Comme des Garçons especially for this exhibition.
The story will be told by exploring Westwood and Kawakubo’s practices across five themes, including how the designers challenged conventions related to female bodies, and how they used fashion to convey a message.
Vivienne Westwood highlights fans will be keen to explore in the exhibition include Westwood’s iconic punk ensembles from the late 1970s, popularised by London bands such as The Sex Pistols and Siousie Sioux; a romantic MacAndreas tartan gown from Westwood’s Anglomania collection (autumn-winter 1993-94), famously worn by Kate Moss on the runway; and the original version of the corseted Wedding dress first shown in the Wake Up, Cave Girl Autumn-winter 2007-08 collection and later worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and The City: The Movie.
In 2017, The Met in New York staged the exhibition, Rei Kawakubo / Comme des Garçon: The Art of the In-Between, which opened with the pop culture phenomenon the Met Gala. The NGV exhibition features a version of the sculptural petal ensemble worn by Rihanna on the red carpet, as well as key designs from collections of those worn by Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Tracee Ellis Ross.
Also on display are dramatic abstract Comme des Garçon works spanning the recent decades which challenge the relationship between the body and clothing, including the playful Two Dimensions, spring-summer 2012, and the abstract forms of Invisible Clothes spring-summer 2017. Striking gingham sculptural forms from Body Meets Dress – Dress Meets Body collection (spring-summer 1997) also feature.
Westwood | Kawakubo
7 December 2025 to 19 April 2026
NGV International, St Kilda Road, Melbourne.
Tickets and information: ngv.melbourne
