Katie Somerville & Danielle Whitfield in conversation
Two visionaries. Two revolutions.
One exhibition that rewrites the language of fashion.
As National Gallery of Victoria prepares to unveil Westwood | Kawakubo, curators Katie Somerville and Danielle Whitfield reveal how rebellion, philosophy and radical beauty collide across five decades of design.
THE SUMMONING
When Fashion Becomes a Confrontation
There are fashion exhibitions-and then there are fashion confrontations. Westwood | Kawakubo, opening 7 December 2025 at NGV International, is a rare collision between two designers who redefined the silhouette of rebellion. Vivienne Westwood, the agitator-warrior. Rei Kawakubo, the poet-architect of the void. Their works, assembled across more than 140 garments, form an exhibition that feels less like a retrospective and more like a séance.
A DIALOGUE ACROSS DISTANCE
Two Continents, One Defiant Pulse
The curators describe the pairing of Westwood and Kawakubo as instinctive, powerful, and necessary. Despite their geographic divide, both designers rebelled against sociocultural rigidity, seeking artistic and economic freedom through dress.
“Both designers sought liberation-from beauty standards, from conformity, from expectations of what a garment must be.”
THEMES THAT ECHO
Where Their Voices Meet
The exhibition’s five themes-Punk and Provocation, Rupture, Reinvention, The Body, The Power of Clothes-act as portals between their practices.
In Punk and Provocation, Westwood’s insurgent 1970s silhouettes sit alongside Kawakubo’s contemporary interpretations of punk as conceptual rebellion.
In Reinvention, English tailoring clashes and harmonises with deconstructed menswear.
“Freedom is the thread running through all of it.”
VITALITY BEHIND THE GLASS
The Museum as a Stage, Not a Cage
The curators reject the idea that garments “die” in museum settings. Carefully designed lighting, music, and multimedia breathe life into the works. Many pieces aren’t behind glass at all. Instead, the exhibition invites visitors into proximity-close enough to feel the weight of wool, the sharpness of a cut, the ghost of a body.
UNCRATING THE ICONS
Moments That Stopped Them Cold
When asked which piece stunned them most, the curators list several:
– The Anglomania tartan wedding gown worn by Kate Moss
– The ethereal ‘cloud dress’ from Wake Up, Cave Girl
– The arrival of 45 Comme des Garçons pieces, which required their own conservation room
“Unboxing Kawakubo’s works felt humbling-like opening reliquaries.”
FASHION AS ACTIVISM, PHILOSOPHY, LANGUAGE
Beyond Clothing
For Westwood, fashion and activism fused into a single force-environmental protest stitched into silhouette and surface.
For Kawakubo, meaning emerges from enigma: brief poetic collection notes, instinct over explanation, emotion as revolution.
“Both expanded fashion’s vocabulary-not just aesthetically, but conceptually.”
What They Might Whisper
If Westwood and Kawakubo were to walk these rooms together, surrounded by decades of their own ghosts-what might they say?
The curators won’t speculate. Some conversations, they insist, belong only to the legends who sparked them.
“Fashion, for both, was never decoration. It was declaration.”
Westwood | Kawakubo
Opens 7 December 2025 – NGV International, Melbourne