Pairing the work of two of the most influential fashion designers in recent history, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) presents the world-premiere summer blockbuster exhibition, Westwood | Kawakubo featuring the work of iconoclasts British designer Vivienne Westwood and Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons from 7 December 2025.
Born a year apart in different countries and cultural contexts, each brought a rule-breaking radicalism to fashion design that subverted the status quo. 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.
Through a showstopping display of more than 140 innovative and ground-breaking designs, Westwood | Kawakubo explores the convergences and divergences between these two self-taught rebels of the fashion world.
The exhibition brings together important loans from international museums and private collections – including New York’s Metropolitan Museum, The Victoria & Albert Museum, Palais Galliera, and the Vivienne Westwood archive – alongside 100+ outstanding works from the NGV Collection.
The exhibition features more than 80 works that have recently entered the NGV Collection, including nearly 40 outstanding works recently gifted to the NGV by Comme des Garçons especially for this exhibition.
Presented thematically, Westwood | Kawakubo charts the defining collections and concerns of their practices – from the mid-1970s to the present day – inviting audiences to consider the multiple ways that Westwood and Kawakubo have each rewritten fashion conventions and codes over the course of their careers.
These include: the impact and influence of the punk zeitgeist of the 1970s; the reinterpretation and reinvention of historical fashion references; their experimental design methodologies and the interrogation of gender and the idealised body.
Alongside fashion, the exhibition also features archival materials, photography, film and runway footage, offering audiences a deep insight into the minds and creative processes of these two legends of contemporary fashion.
Exhibition highlights 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 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.
Major showstopping moments in the exhibition include a dramatic, spotlit gallery highlighting how both designers have been influenced by fashion history; Westwood’s sweeping silk taffeta ball gowns inspired by 18th century court dress are presented alongside Kawakubo’s punk interpretations in pink vinyl and rich floral jacquard.
A further dynamic display juxtaposes the bold, red tartans, English tweeds, grey plaids and navy pinstripes of Kawakubo with Westwood’s iconic tailoring. Sculptural, deconstructed, cinched and exaggerated silhouettes demonstrate their exacting approaches to cutting and textile traditions.
The exhibition design presents the two distinct voices of Westwood and Kawakubo as parallel yet fundamentally unique forces in fashion. The design uses symmetry as its cornerstone concept, presenting these designers like left and right hands; symmetrical but not identical.
“This exhibition celebrates two leading female fashion designers from different cultural backgrounds, who both had strong creative spirits and pushed boundaries,” said Tony Ellwood AM, Director NGV.
“Through more than 140 designs from the NGV Collection and key international loans, 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.”
“We’re indebted to the donors who have helped the NGV to acquire key works by both Westwood and Kawakubo, transforming our holdings into one of the most important in the region.”
“They are Comme des Garçons, Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM & Family, Takamasa Takahashi and David Tune, Robyn Beeche, Andis and Deborah Salins, Anastasia Kogan, Dr. George Kokkinos and Melissa Tonkin, and Fair Shen,” said Mr Ellwood.
The exhibition explores Westwood and Kawakubo’s practices across five themes. Punk and Provocation considers how punk, both aesthetically and conceptually, crystallized in the early collections of each designer and has remained a touchstone, if not a design manifesto, throughout their careers.
Highlight Westwood works in this section convey some of the key aspects of punk clothing – offensive graphics, bondage trousers, distressed knitwear, tartan, leather, safety pins and chains. In dialogue, four notable works by Kawakubo demonstrate the influence and ethos of punk in her practice.
Rupture explores the unique design lexicons of Westwood and Kawakubo, revealing how each have been driven by the desire to break free of convention and reinvent the rules of dress. Early highlights here include displays of Westwood’s Pirate (spring-summer 1981) and Nostalgia of Mud (autumn-winter 1983) collections that encapsulated the New Romantic and Buffalo movements of 1980s London, contrasted by recent works from Kawakubo’s Not Making Clothes collection, spring-summer 2014, which saw her negate the boundaries between body and garment.
Reinvention looks at the way both designers have referenced the past or looked to the future, looking to sources of inspiration that include fashion history, tailoring traditions, decorative arts and textiles. For Westwood art history has been a constant influence, most notably in her Portrait collection (autumn-winter 1990), which featured prints of famous eighteenth century paintings by Boucher and Fragonard emblazoned on the corsetry. For Kawakubo, breaking the rules of taste has resulted in collections that bring together clashing pattern, ruffles and frills.
The Body: Freedom and Restraint explores the ways in which both Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo have consistently challenged existing conventions related to ideal and idealised female bodies and rallied against objectification.
Beginning with iconic works from Westwood’s Erotic Zones collection (spring-summer 1995) and Kawakubo’s The Future of Silhouette (autumn-winter 2017-18), this section considers the ways in which both designers have redefined the female body.
The final section of the exhibition, The Power of Clothes, considers fashion as a tool to convey a message, personal or political, and the powerful individual female voice. It concludes with recent Westwood collections – Propaganda (autumn-winter 2025) and Chaos Point (autumn-winter 2008-09) – that utilise clothing and fabrics as a canvas for messaging about the environment, social inequity of political freedoms in an echo of her early punk days.
These are seen in context with the self-reflective power of Kawakubo’s recent collections (Uncertain Future, spring-summer 2025) which express her emotional response to the state of the world.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an ambitious world-first publication, also titled Westwood | Kawakubo, exploring the intersecting histories of Westwood and Kawakubo with new reflections from industry experts including Jane Mulvaugh, Valerie Steele, Stephen Jones, Akiko Fukai and Dame Zandra Rhodes.
Alongside the summer presentation will be a free kid’s exhibition titled Let’s Party: NGV Fashion for Kids, opening on 28 November. Featuring spectacular garments from the NGV’s Fashion and Textiles Collection including evening dresses, bold, imaginative outfits and playful accessories, young visitors can enjoy hands-on activities where they’ll have the chance to create their own show-stopping fashions.
Westwood | Kawakubo opens at NGV International on Sunday 7 December 2025. Entry fees apply. For more information, visit: www.ngv.vic.gov.au for details.
Images: Comme des Garçons and Vivienne Westwood garments on display at the media announcement of Westwood | Kawakubo on display at NGV International – 7 December 2025 to 19 April 2026 – photo by Eugene Hyland | Vivienne Westwood, London (fashion house), Vivienne Westwood (designer) Look 49, from the Anglomania collection, autumn winter 1993–94, and Comme des Garçons, Tokyo (fashion house) Rei Kawakubo (designer) Ensemble, from the Break Free collection spring-summer 2024 on display at the media announcement of Westwood | Kawakubo – photo by Eugene Hyland | Sarah Jessica Parker wearing a Vivienne Westwood wedding gown on the set of Sex and the City: The Movie, New York City, 12 October 2007. Photo © James Devaney / WireImage via Getty Images | Vivienne Westwood, London (fashion house), Vivienne Westwood (designer) Outfits from the Portrait collection, autumn winter 1990–91 (detail). 116 Pall Mall, London, March 1990. Photo © John van Hasselt / Sygma via Getty Images. Models: Susie Bick & Denice D. Lewis | Comme des Garçons, Tokyo (fashion house), Rei Kawakubo (designer) Look 13, from the Uncertain Future collection, spring summer 2025. Paris, 28 September 2024. Image © Comme des Garçons. Model: Astrid Wagemakers