A major international exhibition in Australia brings together two of the most influential and uncompromising figures in late 20th- and early 21st-century fashion: Vivienne Westwood (1941–2022) and Rei Kawakubo (b. 1942), founder of Comme des Garçons. On view at the Art Gallery in Southbank until 19 April 2026, the exhibition places their work into direct dialogue, examining how two self-taught designers, emerging independently in the 1970s, radically expanded fashion’s conceptual and political horizons.

Presented at the Art Gallery in Southbank, the exhibition situates these works within a broader cultural and global context, emphasising fashion’s capacity to engage with questions of power, identity and social change. At a moment when fashion is increasingly scrutinised for its values and impact, the pairing of Westwood and Kawakubo underscores the enduring relevance of designers who understood clothing as a tool for dissent.

Both Westwood and Kawakubo rose to prominence by rejecting prevailing norms of dress and beauty. In Britain, Westwood’s work drew on punk subculture, historical reference and political activism, transforming clothing into a vehicle for provocation and critique. Kawakubo, working between Tokyo and Paris, pursued a more oblique strategy, challenging Western ideals of form, proportion and femininity through asymmetry, abstraction and a sustained refusal of conventional elegance. Despite their differing methodologies, both designers approached fashion as a means of resistance rather than decoration.

The exhibition brings together more than 140 works from the NGV Collection, alongside significant loans from international museums, the Westwood Heritage archive and private collections. Rather than following a strictly chronological narrative, the display stages thematic and formal encounters between garments, foregrounding shared concerns, such as the reconfiguration of tailoring, questioning gendered dress, and the redefinition of the relationship between body and garment.

Westwood’s garments are characterised by confrontation and excess. Historical silhouettes are distorted, exaggerated or hybridised, with corsetry, tartan and Savile Row tailoring repurposed as tools of critique. Her work consistently insists on fashion’s public and political role. Kawakubo’s designs, by contrast, often negate the body altogether, using volume, void and irregular construction to resist both eroticisation and legibility. Beauty, in her work, emerges through tension and refusal rather than harmony.

Seen together, the exhibition makes clear the extent to which both designers reimagined the technical and conceptual foundations of fashion. By challenging assumptions about cut, form and function, they opened new possibilities for clothing as an intellectual practice. Their influence continues to shape contemporary fashion, from avant-garde design to mainstream approaches to silhouette and construction.

Image: Installation view of Westwood | Kawakubo on display from 7 December 2025 to 19 April 2026, at NGV International, Melbourne. Photo: Sean Fennessy