Born just a year apart, Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo (the visionary behind Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market) couldn’t have come from more different worlds – but both knew how to tear up the fashion rulebook. Their designs dismantled ideas of beauty, gender and taste, and now Melbourne gets a world-first chance to see their radical vision side by side.
Opening on December 7 at the NGV, Westwood | Kawakubo will showcase more than 140 boundary-breaking designs. Many are drawn from the NGV’s own holdings – an extraordinary cache of 300-plus Kawakubo pieces and more than 100 by Westwood – making this one of the most important showcases of their work anywhere in the world.
The exhibition will be arranged thematically, moving from punk’s anarchic spirit in the 1970s to the avant-garde silhouettes of today. Expect explorations of their shared obsessions with historical dress, radical cutting techniques and subversions of gender norms, alongside rare runway footage, archival photography and film.
There are plenty of highlights: punk ensembles once worn by the Sex Pistols and Siouxsie Sioux; the tartan Anglomania gown famously modelled by Kate Moss; Sarah Jessica Parker’s wedding dress from Sex and the City: The Movie; Rihanna’s sculptural ‘petal dress’ from the Met Gala; and key Comme des Garçons collections like Body Meets Dress – Dress Meets Body (SS97) and Uncertain Future (SS25).
A centrepiece gallery will also pit Westwood’s sweeping 18th-century ballgowns against Kawakubo’s gleefully subversive riffs in pink vinyl and opulent jacquards. Think of the exhibit as a fashion face-off between two designers who refused to play by the rules – and whose influence still shapes how to think about style.
Westwood | Kawakubo runs from December 7, 2025, to April 19, 2026, at the NGV International. For tickets and further details, visit the website here.
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