The new webpage, entitled 'How have objects come to be in the V&A?', points out that for some objects, their journeys have involved known histories of violence, coercion or injustice, while for others there remains uncertainty over exactly how they came to be here.
Participating in London Fashion Week is not a luxury but a necessity for any emerging brand aiming to go global. It's your ticket to the world of international fashion. - Katie England, Creative Director of Topshop and curator of the New Generation program
"The name is a paradox. They never functioned as a collective," says Kaat Debo, MoMu's director. "Some of them still describe that label as a blessing and a curse. But they were friends."
The question of how fashion is archived - what enters the museum; what is deemed worthy of preservation; whose clothes are considered culturally significant enough to outlast the bodies that wore them - has long sat uneasily at the centre of fashion history itself. Institutions have tended to answer it, or ignore it, in much the same way: couture gowns under glass, luxury garments mounted on conservation-grade mannequins in blockbuster exhibitions - an implicit hierarchy of the designed over the worn, the authored over the anonymous.
In 1971, Manolo Blahnik created shoes for the designer Ossie Clark's catwalk show in London. Relatively new to shoemaking, the Spanish designer forgot to put steel pins in the heels of the shoes, which meant that models wobbled, unbalanced, down the catwalk.
"Nostalgia is my favorite feeling," said Madison Feely '26, who referenced childhood classics including "Where the Wild Things Are" and "Little Women" in her collection, "Homebody." She emphasized that her designs celebrate a well-lived childhood, honoring the authors and illustrators who allow her to relive it each time she opens their books.
As an interdisciplinary artist, Madita defies simple categorisation, moving fluidly between the worlds of fine art, fashion, and performative expression. In this photo editorial, Madita proves that the artist and the artwork are often the same.
Travelling for art can be incredibly virtuous and culturally rewarding, like collecting souvenirs for your eyes (and from the post card rail in the gift shop). Remembering to research what is on before I book flights is a lesson I learnt all too well after I missed the Metropolitan Museum's fashion exhibition in 2016 by one day. As a fashion obsessed 20 something, I did not take this well and have since improved my itinerary planning and exhibition calendar checking.
In the show, "dirty" extends to anything that breaks fashion's pact with propriety. Here are clothes caked in grime, blotted with makeup, stiffened by salt, pieced from trash, frayed, and faded. The garments span decades, from the 1980s through the mid-2000s, when the likes of Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gaultier built their fame on defying convention, to today, when corporatization has made such daring increasingly rare. But forgoing practicality frees certain designers from the demands that the body be polite-and thereby policed.
The end of the show did not mark the end of the trip. Back at the Le Grand Bellevue the group divided between fireside hot chocolates and the hotel's spa. The hotel's Le Grand Spa is over 3,000 square metres and has eight different types of saunas, several ice showers, foot baths and an outdoor bubble pool (named thus as it's bigger than your standard jacuzzi).
Speaking backstage before the show, Anderson, dressed in his signature faded Levi's jeans and a navy cashmere sweater, described the collection as another character study, explaining that this time he set out to explore the idea of a new aristocracy, questioning what it means today and what can it be? The-41-year old designer said when it came to the social hierarchy he wanted to ignore the aspect of money and instead home in on their eccentricity.
There are two types of shows during New York Fashion Week: 1. The official shows that happen within the venues. 2. The "shows" that happen on the street. Ninety percent of the people get dressed up, hoping to get photographed by a popular publication such as Vogue or WWD. Street style happens as guests make their way in and out of a brand's/designer's show.
That past is his - it is the 20th anniversary of his label, and accordingly he decided to embrace, engage, even embed himself in his own history. Which, in and of itself, is a history of histories - Moralıoğlu's office is peppered with random 1930s portraits (the ones his husband, the architect Philip Joseph, won't let him keep in their Bloomsbury home) and old, time-warped issues of Vogue, as well as overflows of books on everything from Merce Cunningham to Alfred Hitchcock.
Embroidery is a historic mainstay of traditional clothing in Asia or the Middle East, as well as Western Haute Couture, but it is increasingly present in Paris, Milan or New York on modern men's shirts, bomber jackets or blazers. Designers at Dior, Dolce Gabbana, Kenzo or Gucci have adopted it in recent runway shows, while Louis Vuitton's celebrity rapper-designer Pharell Williams dedicated his entire June collection to India after visiting the country.