{"id":253029,"date":"2026-01-26T21:05:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T21:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/253029\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T21:05:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T21:05:20","slug":"vivienne-westwood-and-rei-kawakubos-fashion-designs-bring-punk-play-and-power-to-new-exhibition-at-the-ngv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/253029\/","title":{"rendered":"Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo’s fashion designs bring punk, play and power to new exhibition at the NGV"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Stephen Jones was a young fashion student in London in the 1970s, he liked to visit a clothing shop on Kings Road called Sex.<\/p>\n

Previously sporting names including Let it Rock and Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die, it was the infamous boutique run by designers Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/p>\n

Punk model and actor Jordan (Pamela Rooke, left) and Vivienne Westwood (right), London 1977.\u00a0 (Supplied: Tim Jenkins\/WWD\/Penske Media via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

McLaren was the manager of the Sex Pistols, and the pair costumed the city’s punk and underground scenes.<\/p>\n

Jones says he would scurry in and out of the shop, cowed by the glow of his fashion icon. But before long, the nascent milliner was encountering Westwood professionally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He eventually got tapped on the shoulder to collaborate with her on a series of tweed crowns for her late 80s Harris Tweed collection.<\/p>\n

Four decades later, the legendary hat designer once again got the tap on the shoulder, this time to help pull together an enormous double-header exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), honouring the work of Dame Vivienne and Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo.<\/p>\n

Jones describes the work of both women as “life-changing”.<\/p>\n

“It’s difficult to see how they could not influence you if you were growing up at that time.”<\/p>\n

\"Stephen<\/p>\n

Stephen Jones OBE is a renowned London milliner who worked with Vivienne Westwood on the pictured tweed crown for her Harris Tweed collection. (Supplied: NGV\/Eugene Hyland)<\/p>\n

Streetwear and sculptures<\/p>\n

At first glance, Westwood and Kawakubo are starkly different.<\/p>\n

The opening Westwood works in this exhibition are bold and brash designs that earned her the Godmother of Punk title: bondage pants and reams of tartan; Johnny Rotten hair pieces (designed by Jones) and her God Save the Queen shirt.<\/p>\n

Jones says Westwood’s simple changes to long-standing design traditions \u2014 like leaving a seam raw or wearing a bra as outerwear \u2014 were radical when they first emerged.<\/p>\n

“These were such shocking ideas; before Vivienne had done it, nobody had thought of that.”\"Composite<\/p>\n

Vivienne Westwood designs from her Nostalgia of Mud, Anglomania and On Liberty collections.\u00a0 (Supplied: NGV\/Robyn Beeche\/firstVIEW\/Guy Marineau)<\/p>\n

An outspoken social commentator and activist until she died aged 81 in 2022, Westwood had clear statements to make and used her cultural cache make them.<\/p>\n

Kawakubo couldn’t be more different.<\/p>\n

The mannequins wearing her works in the exhibition are headless, shrouded in distorted silhouettes and dark colours that offer a cool contrast to Westwood, forcing you to stop and peer closely at the drape, at the odd placement of an opening, at the piece of clothing that looks alive.<\/p>\n

“Rei’s garments have this weird proportion or this weird shape, but are perfectly made, immaculate, like an haute couture,” Jones says.<\/p>\n

“They would work very well as a sculpture in the corner of your room.”<\/p>\n

\"Composite<\/p>\n

Kawakubo and her designs. (Supplied: NGV\/Comme des Gar\u00e7ons\/Paolo Roversi)<\/p>\n

Born a year after Westwood in war-time Tokyo, the elusive founder of global brand Commes de Gar\u00e7ons rarely gives interviews and refuses to explain her designs, publicly stating: “I don’t like to show myself or my name. You have to know me through the clothes.”<\/p>\n

But when you walk into the cavernous rooms of the NGV, the enormous collection of more than 140 works come together with an unanticipated cohesion.<\/p>\n

Despite their obvious differences, it’s clear that a common heart beats beneath the flawlessly stitched creations of these two designers.<\/p>\n

\"Composite<\/p>\n

Westwood’s Lilly From the Valley Dress \u2014 made famous when worn by Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City. (Supplied: NGV\/Sean Fennessy\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Punk at heart<\/p>\n

“The only reason I’m in fashion is to destroy the word ‘conformity’,” pulses a quote from Westwood on the gallery walls.<\/p>\n

As you slip from room to room, you can see how she took traditional silhouettes and elements from ball gowns, military uniform and menswear, and gave them irreverent twists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her Pirates collection of the early 80s celebrated flamboyant androgyny, and she made corsets and pearls punk.<\/p>\n

\"Exhibition<\/p>\n

Both Westwood and Kawakubo loved creating designs using tartan.\u00a0 (Supplied: NGV\/Sean Fennessy)<\/p>\n

“Before there was only classic, but when I worked with Vivienne, you could move between punk and classic and choose any part you want, or you could combine two things,” Jones says.<\/p>\n

Perhaps more surprising, though, is the following quote from Kawakubo:<\/p>\n

“I never intended to start a revolution. I only came to Paris with the intention of showing what I thought was strong and beautiful. It just so happened that my notion was different from everybody else’s.”<\/p>\n

Westwood once famously described Kawakubo as “a punk at heart” and this exhibition shows why.<\/p>\n

Key fashion moments of Vivienne Westwood<\/a><\/p>\n

Vivinne Westwood’s clothes epitomised non-conformity and pushed her anti-establishment agenda. Here’s a look at some her work that changed the fashion landscape.<\/p>\n

After years building her craft in Tokyo, the designer landed in France in 1981 with her all-black collections of distressed fabric, which fashion elites at the time derided as “Hiroshima Chic”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She would be vindicated in 2000, when she received an Excellence in Design Award from Harvard University, who extravagantly declared that she “invented” black.<\/p>\n

Kawakubo pushed back entirely on a fashion world that was all about emphasising the female form, wanting to create clothes that, in her words, “did not exist before”.<\/p>\n

As her colour palette grew, and so did her design risks. She added arms in unexpected places, distorted silhouettes with padding, shrouded her models in amorphous, almost alien shapes.<\/p>\n

\"Adrian<\/p>\n

Rei Kawakubo’s husband, Adrian Joffe, is the CEO of Comme des Gar\u00e7ons International. (Supplied: NGV\/Eugene Hyland)<\/p>\n

President of Comme des Garcons and Kawakubo’s husband Adrian Joffe says a key element of her designs \u2014 and one that aligns her with Westwood \u2014 is just “ignoring” gender.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think it was a deliberate thing of ‘I’m going to now do a skirt for men’,” he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s just a part of not listening to the rules.”<\/p>\n

Despite their aesthetic differences, Joffe says Kawakubo and Westwood always “respected and really appreciated” each other’s work.<\/p>\n

“I think it was the fact of being brave enough to break the rules and try to do something new \u2014 and both being women, I think, was an important thing.<\/p>\n

“They were anti-establishment, don’t worry about what people think: that punk spirit.”The power of fashion<\/p>\n

The mood of the Westwood | Kawakubo exhibition shifts radically in each space, as clothes appear to surprise, confound and delight.<\/p>\n

One room is brash and charged: bright lights, chains and leather. Another is red and soft with a pulsing heartbeat and resplendent gowns of unfathomable structure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Vivienne<\/p>\n

Vivienne Westwood wears her values on her clothes while walking the runway at London Fashion Week in 2012. (Supplied: Gareth Cattermole\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

In an enormous open hall, you pass a sweep of statuesque, Westwood-bedecked mannequins to be faced with a wall of Kawakubo coats, towering over you.<\/p>\n

Whether it’s reinventing fashion norms, challenging what clothes can be, or just outright protesting issues such as climate change and LGBTQIA+ rights, the sheer power of their work pulses through every room.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You might not always know where your arm is meant to go, but it stirs something in your chest.<\/p>\n

“It’s about an emotion, because that’s where it all starts from,” says Joffe.<\/p>\n

“Rei gets very angry at certain things happening in the news and that gets filtered through to the collections \u2014 what is fashion anyway, without emotion?”<\/p>\n

As well as creating enormously successful global businesses, Jones says the two women took fashion to a new place.<\/p>\n

“What they do is create art, and they really set the standard for an alternative, the fact that you didn’t have to go down one path,” he says.<\/p>\n

\"Composite<\/p>\n

Rihanna wore a Commes des Gar\u00e7ons design at the 2017 Met Gala. (Supplied: NGV\/Sean Fennessy\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

And Jones has no doubt at all about the extreme impact their work continues to wield.<\/p>\n

“Imagine if you were 15 years old and coming around this and you’d see a T-shirt or a pair of boots or just think, ‘oh, there’s all these different ways that you can be’,” he says.<\/p>\n

“If you want to tell your own story, you can. Clothing is expression. Clothing is revolution.”<\/p>\n

Westwood | Kawakubo is showing at the National Gallery of Victoria until 19 April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Stephen Jones was a young fashion student in London in the 1970s, he liked to visit a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[146635,442,498,499,500,146633,501,156,111,139,69,146632,146634,139381,146629,146628,146630,146631],"class_list":{"0":"post-253029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-adrian-joffe","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-commes-des-garcons","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-newzealand","18":"tag-nz","19":"tag-rei-kawakubo","20":"tag-stephen-jones","21":"tag-vivienne-westwood","22":"tag-vivienne-westwood-melbourne","23":"tag-vivienne-westwood-ngv","24":"tag-vivienne-westwood-wedding-dress","25":"tag-westwood-kawakubo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}