Fashion is foremost in London this summer with two very exciting exhibitions – and then there’s the stunning Commes des Garcons exhibition at the MMA in New York City, which also opened the Met Gala this past week. Baroque Access has all the details
London’s Victoria & Albert Museum is the location for the exciting ‘Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion’ exhibition that will take place from May 27 2017 all the way to February 18 2018. This Balenciaga retrospective will be the first exhibition dedicated to the famed Spanish designer in the UK, marking the 100th anniversary of the opening of his first fashion house and 80 years since he opened the doors of his famous Paris salon. It will feature around 100 garments and 20 hats crafted by the couturier and his followers – alongside sketches, photographs, film and fabric samples. The exhibition will also examine in detail the craftsmanship and techniques that earned Balenciaga the reputation as one of the most pioneering designers of the 20th Century. It will also look at how his work impacted the future of fashion design.
Also in London, but at a different venue – The Fashion and Textile Museum – is the World of Anna Sui, the first retrospective of an American designer to be held in Britain). This exhibition, which takes place from 26 May to 1 October 2017, features the works of this classic American fashion designer, whose signature rock ‘n roll romanticism has reinvented pop culture. Since she first showed her designs in 1991, Anna Sui has changed the course of fashion history with her iconic creations. The exhibition features more than 100 different looks from the designer’s archives.
For those in New York City this month, the iconic Metropolitan Museum of Art is showing Commes des Garcons much talked-about exhibition, ‘Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons’. On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 999, The Costume Institute’s spring 2017 exhibition examines the work of Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, who is renowned for her avant-garde designs and ability to challenge conventional notions of beauty, good taste, and what is fashionable. The show will feature around 150 examples of Kawakubo’s womenswear collecitons for Comme des Garçons dating from the early 1980s to her most recent collection.
Objects will be organized into eight different aesthetic expressions, including Fashion/Anti-Fashion, Design/Not Design, Model/Multiple, Then/Now, High/Low, Self/Other, Object/Subject, and Clothes/Not Clothes.