Born in Melbourne in 1966, Martin Grant, along with his three sisters, schoolteacher mother and history professor father, grew up in a light-filled modernist home surrounded by trees in suburban Blackburn. There was no television, but the family dress-up box was filled with treasures that Grant spent hours dressing up his sisters in. Grant was still at primary school when he progressed to working with fabric, scissor and needle. This shift came soon after a weekend spent with his grandmother Nancy Grant, who was a practising seamstress. By his early teens, the lure of flea market thrifting and an interest in punk (and later New Romantic) music opened a new world of creative self-expression, in which subcultural identity through clothes was paramount. 

Grant began his career as a self-taught fashion designer in Melbourne in the early 1980s. He was part of a thriving independent fashion scene and an active participant in the Fashion Design Council (FDC) parades, which were known for their innovative approach to the presentation of contemporary Australian fashion. After seven years of successfully running his own fashion label in Melbourne, Grant formally undertook studies in sculpture at the Victorian College of the Arts. Travelling to the United Kingdom in 1990, Grant then worked for two London-based fashion houses before making the decision to move to Paris. In 1992, Grant re-established his fashion label and four years later opened his own boutique in the Marais district. In 2003 Grant was invited to join Barney’s New York as Artistic Director of the store’s Private Label, a tenure he held for ten years and more recently he designed for Qantas.

With the support and admiration of key figures in the fashion world, Grant established his international reputation by the early 2000s. Over the course of his more than forty- years career, many leading actors, performers and fashion industry icons, – including Cate Blanchett, Lady Gaga, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, André Leon Talley, Lee Radziwill, Tilda Swinton and Juliette Binoche – have worn his impeccably- cut garments for the red carpet, fashion runway, editorial and daily life. 

A persistent theme at the heart of the work of Martin Grant since the very beginning is his love of collaboration.

As a self-taught designer, the role that family members such as Martin Grant’s mother, grandmother and early mentors have played in encouraging and developing his aspirations is important to acknowledge. Grant was still at primary school when he progressed from paintings of ballgowns to working with fabric, scissor and needle. This shift came soon after a weekend spent with his grandmother, Nancy, who was a practising seamstress.

In 1981, at the age of sixteen, Grant left home and school in Melbourne’s suburban Blackburn to explore life in the city. A short time later, he established his own label and studio, joining the creative throng of milliners, art directors, painters, fashion magazines, model agencies and rock bands spilling from the studios and offices of Stalbridge Chambers at 443 Little Collins Street. Along with his fellow Stalbridge residents, Grant regularly presented his designs in the iconic parades staged by the Fashion Design Council (FDC), a non-profit organisation established by the Victorian state government in the early 1980s.

I think it was an important time in Melbourne in terms of fashion,’ reflects Grant. ‘It was the first time that young designers were given a voice and a platform to show their work.’ Along for the journey were two of his friends and earliest collaborators, milliner Tamasine Dale and photographer Polly Borland.

Tamasine Dale
The creative relationship with Dale started with her creating an array of hats in straw and sculpted felt to finish Grant’s silhouettes. When looking back at this time, Dale particularly admires ‘the way that [Grant] structured his business and working life… merging lifestyle, friendships and work. It was a really good introduction to being able to live that life, an artistic life.’

An important friendship grew out of their work together, and their partnership continues to the present day. Grant describes it as ‘such a natural process that exists that I can say in few words, and it can be understood and translated and picked up.’ Dale travels to Paris regularly to work on forthcoming collections with Grant.

Rosslynd Piggott
Melbourne artist Rosslynd Piggott moved in the same circles and was also creating work for the earliest of the FDC presentations. She became a loyal client of the emerging designer and, in turn, a lifelong friend and collaborator. Among her extensive collection of Grant’s work is an early slashed-back dress, which Piggott donated to the NGV in 1999. ‘It was something quite new at that time,’ Piggott says, on what drew her to Grant’s work. ‘Martin was much more about structure, spare but not boring, lean minimalism. [His designs are] incredibly sexy in this beautiful, elegant way.

Polly Borland
Collaborations with photographers have also been a strong thread throughout Grant’s career. It all began in the early 1980s when the then-emerging photographer Polly Borland began regularly documenting Grant’s work, initiating another key and enduring creative relationship. Borland began by focussing on portraiture and editorial work, and quicky established herself as a go-to photographer for Australian Vogue, Vogue Living, Pol, and Tension Magazine, during which time she frequently shot the work of Grant. Later, when based in England, Borland shot images for influential magazines Face, Arena and BLITZ, as well as portraits with a specialty in Australian expatriates such as Nic Cave and Cate Blanchett. One image included in the exhibition features Blanchett wearing Grant’s striking red wool Joan of Arc dress, 1999. Borland has continued to work closely with the designer and developed a distinct language for documenting his work.

Jenny Watson
One of Borland’s earliest portraits of the young designer (also on display in the NGV exhibition) shows him standing in front of Jenny Watson’s painting This Year’s Fashion, 1984. Watson and Grant had studios opposite each other in Stalbridge Chambers in the early 1980s and used to swap clothes for paintings. The work remains a talisman of sorts for the designer who gives it pride of place in his studio to this day. They collaborated years later in 2007, when artist Jenny Watson created a series of twenty-four drawings depicting a girl wearing one of Grant’s designs and pursuing her runaway dog. The drawings were transformed into a short, animated film titled Walking the dog that was screened during the presentation of his 2007 spring–summer collection at Paris Fashion Week.

Christian Louboutin
After his more to Paris in the early 1990s Grant opened his first boutique in a tiny former barber’s shop on Rue des Rosiers in the Marais district. The endeavour marked his new life and career as a Paris-based designer and increased Grant’s profile among important clients and industry figures. Around this time, French shoe designer Christian Louboutin lent Grant his iconic red soled shoes to support the young designer and accompany his work on the runway. With Louboutin, Grant formed another important creative partnership, and the pair eventually collaborated on a range of shoes especially for the Martin Grant label that continues to this day. In 2013, when Grant designed the Qantas uniforms, he once again collaborated with Louboutin on the creation of the shoes.

While creating fashion was his focus, Grant also pursued several artistic projects that combined his love of sculpture practice and fashion history. In 1994, he presented Habiller Deshabiller, a site-specific installation in the famous gardens of Château de Courances, south of Paris. Dressing the garden sculptures with made-to-measure crinolines in cream calico, playing with the scale of the same fashionable silhouette which had fascinated him so much as a small child. 

As a designer, maker and sculptor of fashion, Martin Grant has mastered the art of cut and tailoring. Grant’s innate understanding of clothing and its relationship to the body manifests as polished and conscious designs.

Informed by materiality and construction – ‘the craft of clothing [is what] interested me,’¹ – Martin Grant’s collections reinvent and iterate wardrobe staples and garment archetypes, particularly outerwear, suiting and eveningwear. Grant describes his practice as not being about ‘themes or stories, it’s always about the fabrics, the colours, the forms.’ ²

Grant is not interested in trends, rather he collapses time through refining and revisiting his archive. This is emphasised in the NGV exhibition through the presentation of Grant’s 2021 Crinoline coat – also known as the Mary Poppins coat – the original design conceived in 1994. For Grant’s 1994 autumn–winter collection and first Paris presentation, the Crinoline coat references Grant’s Melbourne years when he was enamoured by the bell-shaped silhouettes of the 1890s and 1950s. The coat also resembles a gown worn by the desolate figure depicted in another long-time collaborator and friend, Jenny Watson’s painting A lady down on her luck, 1987, a work that remains in Grant’s private collection.

After opening his Rue des Rosiers boutique in 1996 and a chance meeting with the late André Leon Talley, Grant had found himself a confidant and ambassador. Talley was amazed by Grant’s ‘strength in the distillation, the very process of eliminating all extraneousness from his work… It is very depouillé (clean) and is the core of his success… A Martin Grant coat has a nuance that evokes the high style of French couture seen in the best work of Hubert de Givenchy and Balenciaga’.³ With Talley’s support, Grant presented his 2000–01 autumn–winter collection at Paris Fashion Week. Talley secured Naomi Campbell to model in the boutique presentation, resulting in an acceleration of Grant’s burgeoning international acclaim.

This same collection marks the emergence of another key design archetype: the Napoleon II coat. Evocative of Grant’s interest in reinventing classic coat forms, the Napoleon II coat features an exaggerated wide angular lapel and subtly fluted sleeves, design features which he continued to develop throughout later collections. In the exhibition, two examples appear, a sumptuous espresso brown glazed leather and a signature red felted wool. Both feature cavalry references in the vertical and horizontal panelling and reinforced topstitching emphasising the structural form and immaculate finishes that are recurrent in Grant’s work.

Despite the structural materialisation of Grant’s designs, their conception is of a far more organic nature. Describing his process in 2011, Grant said:

The way that I learned to work is called moulage in French, literally moulding the fabric on the dummy… I’ve never been a designer who draws a flat drawing and then executes it. I always start with the fabric and then do the drawing afterwards, which means I am immediately working in the 3D form.⁴

As such, his designs often emerge intuitively through the direct manipulation of fabric on a dressmaker’s mannequin.

In fact, throughout his career, Grant has predominantly been concerned with structure and form rather than pattern and colour. Instead opting for classic fabrics, such as felted wool and silk satin, the designer’s work responds to evolution rather than revolution. Grant’s deep appreciation of the traditional techniques that sit at the heart of bespoke and couture practices. Truly a sculptor of fashion, Grant is a designer who never wavers, a designer whose designs are eternally elegant.

Footnotes
1. Somerville, Katie. “Martin Grant/Paris.” 2024. Vimeo.com. https://vimeo.com/47558223. Date accessed 30 January 2025.
2. Ibid
3. Talley, André Leon, ‘Foreword’, Martin Grant,Paris (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2005).
4. Rocca, Jane. “Martin Grant on the Joy and Discomfort of Donating His 8. Martin Grant, interview by Jean-Pierre Chabrol, July 2005

Forming the foundation of the Martin Grant exhibition are works from the generous donation of 217 works by the designer in 2023. Dramatically enhancing NGV’s representation of the designer, the gift has made possible this thematic retrospective spanning more than four decades of the designer’s career.

The gift comprises designs spanning the early 1990s, when he established his eponymous label in Paris, through to his recent and acclaimed autumn-winter 2019 collection. Offering an unprecedented insight into his creative process and milieu, the gift also includes a large gift of archival material; press clippings, runway footage, sketches and photographs.

Highlights from the gift include glamourous cocktail wear and evening gowns in monochromatic hues and dramatic patterns. Look 5, dress from the designer’s 2014 spring-summer collection features a graphic diamond jacquard conceived by Grant. This dynamic geometric black and white jacquard fabric reinforces the signature silhouettes of Grant’s razor-sharp bustiers and sculptural skirt volumes.

Whereas, Look 9, dress from autumn-winter 2008 reflects his mastery of structure and volume. The pooling train and carefully manipulated rosette all made from a rich wool showcase Grant’s deep understanding of fabric and drape, to create a silhouette that sumptuously envelops the body.

Grant’s precisian of line and construction is demonstrated in Look 28, evening dress from 2007 autumn-winter. The metallic velvet liquifies the silhouette, exuding a timeless appeal with a modern sense of minimalistic luxury.

Another masterclass in voluminous tailoring is Look 8, dress from autumn–winter 2018, featuring an asymmetric and exaggerated shoulder that imbues blooming flowers. This work reflects the designer’s intrinsic understanding of three-dimensional form.

Grant’s signature outerwear – including expertly tailored jackets, peacoats and trench coats balance minimalism with a playful approach to proportion, underpinned by rigorous pattern-cutting. Look 1, Coat with an exaggerated cape-like overlayed collar, narrow silhouette and immaculate finishing from the pre-fall 2020 collection was in fact first presented for autumn–winter 2008–09, also as the first look. This 2020 collection marked a shift in Grant’s practice where he made the conscious decision to refrain from designing new silhouettes and instead, recutting signature styles.

Grant’s mastery of tailoring not only materialises in outerwear but also jumpsuits. Here, a slick double-breasted suit with matching cape and jumpsuit, featuring an asymmetric cut-away bodice, showcases Grant’s ability to distil designs without reliance on narrative. The subtle revealing of the body and shaped line of the jacket also reflect the designer’s tasteful embrace of the body’s sensuality.

Iterating garment archetypes, the trench coat from the 2017 spring-summer collection saw Grant explore adjustable fastenings and accents that encourage the wearer to encounter diverse ways of styling the garments. Featuring a contrast black waist tie that is concealed around the body, revealing itself at the centre front this trench coat is a play on the classic fastening of a wardrobe staple.

Grant’s commitment to silhouette, drape and tailoring has endured throughout his career. Concerning himself with structure and form rather than pattern and colour, so as not to distract from the construction of a garment, this monochromatic work epitomises grant’s commitment to championing silhouette.

Another major acquisition for the exhibition is La Robe Rouge (The Red Dress), 2010, printed 2025 by French photographer Sarah Moon. Born in France in 1941, Moon relocated to England during the occupation. As a teenager she studied drawing before embarking on a career as a fashion model in the 1960s, and since 1968 she has worked as a fashion photographer and filmmaker. Generously supported by the NGV Women’s Association, this work typifies Moon’s renowned dreamlike aesthetic and representations of femininity free from time and context. Here, Moon perfectly captures this atmospheric nuance in this image of Martin Grant’s Look 24 dress of 2010. The model is photographed from behind; the red dress and shoes seem to blend into the background – the curves, shapes and texture of the garment gently echo the abstracted shapes behind.