Westwood & Kawakubo

Both began outside the traditional fashion establishment. Westwood channelled punk’s anti-authoritarian force into silhouettes that reinterpreted British history, turning the corset, the crinoline and Savile Row tailoring into tools of critique. Kawakubo, founder of Comme des Garçons, pursued ideas that did not previously exist, exploring asymmetry, exposed construction, distorted silhouettes and garments that challenged any stable notion of beauty or function. Each used technique not to reinforce convention but to disturb it.

The exhibition positions their work in dialogue, presenting more than 140 pieces that outline two distinct philosophies shaped by experimentation. Westwood’s approach draws heavily from archives and historical dress, reworking familiar symbols to expose the politics embedded within clothing. Kawakubo approaches the same terrain by erasing reference, stripping garments of expected shapes, inventing new volumes and redefining the relationship between body and garment.

Across themes such as tailoring, the body, protest and reinvention, it becomes clear that both designers viewed fashion as a site of agency. Westwood’s activism, especially in her later decades, demonstrates how clothing can operate as a cultural message as much as a craft. Kawakubo’s work, while more abstract, carries its own form of resistance, a refusal to conform to narrative, gender codes or commercial expectation.

What unites them is not aesthetic similarity but conviction. Both believed in fashion as an instrument for challenging assumptions, shifting norms and creating new forms of expression. The NGV exhibition traces how their innovations, material, conceptual and structural designs continue to shape contemporary fashion, reminding us that the most enduring impact often comes from those who choose to work against the grain.