Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo paired for the first time in blockbuster exhibition at the NGV | Fashion

R.Avant Garde fashion designers, Vivian Westwood Wi -Kawakobo, will be collected at a wonderful summer exhibition announced on Tuesday by the National Exhibition of Victoria.

More than 20 years have passed since Westwood’s work is widely in Australia, and the NGV show will be the first since the designer’s death in December 2023.

Under the auspices of NGV, with works derived from the wide fashion collection in the museum that is completed by loans from the Metropolitan Museum, V & A and others, Westwood | Kawakubo will open in Melbourne On December 7.

Westwood emerged as a designer behind worrying, treated and obscene clothes often in the scene of the villain in London in the 1970s, before moving towards sewing and historically ready in the early eighties. Later on her climate activity has become an important element in her life and work.

After the foundation Comme des Garçons In its native Japanese native, Kawakubo was the fashion institution when it started to appear in Paris in 1981. Its annoying and cheerful designs won it at a underground mass base, and with the inclusion of history, they gained critical approval as well. In 2017, Kawakobo was the subject of a rare independent exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum; This was only the second time that the Fashion Institute has managed an exhibition of a living designer, the first is Eve Saint Laurent in 1983.

Katie Summeril, fashion coordinator and textiles at NGV and coordinator of the exhibition, says, while Westwood and Kwakobo are aesthetically distinguished, there is a “beautiful consistency” in the life and practices of designers. Both designers were self -studying and born one year. They also built works in an industry that was dominated by males at their higher levels.

When planning the exhibition, Somerville looked if the conjugation had been presented before, “and there was no one,” she says. “So this is always a truly exciting place … when you can present a concept for the exhibition that opens a new floor.”

Instead of the serial preparation retroactively, the exhibition will be coordinated objectively, with rooms intended for the villain, and the participation of designers with the body and their historical effects.

More than 140 works will be shown, including the villain groups early from Westwood, along with the Tartan dress that Kate Moss wears in the Anglomania collection of the 1993-1994 designer. From Comme Des Garçons, there will be a dedicated dress that Rihanna wears to MET 2017 and 40 clothes donated by Kawakubo for the exhibition.

NGV has become known for its double films, including Warhol Ai Weiwei and Keith Harring/Jean Michel Basikiyat: Transit Lines. Westwood Kawakubo will be the first fashion pair and the first to show artists. “I think when individual artists gather … [there are] “There are great new ways to see their work that comes out of this comparison,” says Somerfille.

“We are not for a minute, we say it is similar or similar, but there is enough there that links them to make this type of work back and forth to look at their work together … truly exciting and productive.”