Westwood | Kawakubo
NGV International
Ground Level
Opens 7 Dec, ticketed
- NGV Member Adult $36
- NGV Member Child $14
(5–15 years)
- NGV Member Family $92
- Adult $40
- Concession $37
Seniors card discount Wednesdays only
- Child $18
(5–15 years)
- Family $98
(2 adults + 3 children)
- Flexible Exhibition Entry $80
This major international exhibition pairs the work of two of the most influential fashion designers in recent history, Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons.
Beginning their careers in the 1970s working in different countries and cultural contexts, British-born Vivienne Westwood (1941–2022), and Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo (b.1942), introduced a rule-breaking radicalism to fashion by subverting the status quo. As self-taught, independent practitioners, Westwood and Kawakubo’s affinity lies in their uncompromising originality anchored in a desire for personal freedom, autonomy, and social and aesthetic change. Their unorthodox approaches have similarly questioned conventions of taste, gender and beauty, the body, and garment form and function to change how we think about fashion.
Bringing together works from the NGV Collection with selected important loans from international museums and private collections, the exhibition highlights key collections and concerns, showcasing over 140 designs that explore the convergences and divergences between the two designers’ work. Structuring themes include Punk and Provocation, Rupture, Reinvention and The Body and The Power of Clothes, each considering different ways in which Westwood and Kawakubo have rewritten fashion convention over the course of their careers.
Select Works
The exhibition features garments, archival materials, photography, film and runway footage and is accompanied by a major publication.
Learn more about Westwood | Kawakubo with an introduction from Tony Ellwood, Director of NGV, Katie Somerville, NGV Senior Curator of Fashion and Textiles and Danielle Whitfield, NGV Curator of Fashion and Textiles.
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