28 Shad Thames

01/05/2012 > 09/07/2012

The Design Museum presents the first UK retrospective of iconic French shoe designer Christian Louboutin, celebrating a career which has pushed the boundaries of high fashion shoe design.

This exhibition celebrates Louboutin’s career to date and showcases twenty years of designs and inspiration, revealing the artistry and theatricality of his shoe design from stilettos to lace-up boots, studded sneakers and bejewelled pumps. Louboutin’s shoes are the epitome of style, glamour, power, femininity and elegance.

At the core of the exhibition will be a unique exploration of Louboutin’s design process, taking the visitor through every stage of the design journey, revealing how a shoe is constructed, from the initial drawing and first prototype through to production in the factory. Looking beyond design and production the exhibition will also explore the company’s innovative store design.

Silk Street

06/07/2012 > 05/09/2012

The Barbican marks the 50th anniversary of the James Bond franchise, from 1962's Dr No to this year's Skyfall, with a unique exhibition showcasing the inside story of the design and style of the world's most influential and iconic movie brand.

In collaboration with EON Productions and with unprecedented access to their archives, Designing 007 will be a multi-sensory experience, immersing audiences in the creation and development of Bond style over its auspicious 50 year history.

It will explore the craft behind the screen icons, the secret service and villains, tailoring and costumes, set and production design, automobiles, gadgets and special effects, graphic design and motion graphics, exotic locations, stunts and props.

Highlights include gadgets and weapons made for Bond and his notorious adversaries by special effects experts John Stears and Chris Corbould, along with artwork for sets and storyboards by production designers Sir Ken Adam, Peter Lamont and Syd Cain, and costume designs by Bumble Dawson, Donfeld, Julie Harris, Lindy Hemming, Ronald Patterson, Emma Porteous, and Jany Temime.

On display too will be lavish screen finery by Hollywood costume designers and major fashion names including Giorgio Armani, Brioni, Roberto Cavalli, Tom Ford, Hubert de Givenchy, Gucci's Frida Giannini, Douglas Hayward, Rifat Ozbek, Jenny Packham, Miuccia Prada, Oscar de la Renta, Anthony Sinclair, Philip Treacy, Emanuel Ungaro and Donatella Versace.

Designing 007 will transform the Barbican, taking the audience on a journey - a 'making of' and presentation of Bond style over 50 years.

Shambellie House

01/04/2012 - 31/10/2012

Horrockses Fashions Limited was one of the most well-respected off-the-peg labels of the 1940s and 1950s. They gained a reputation for practicality and glamour combined with easy-care fabrics. Sold in most of the cities and towns in Britain and backed by succesful advertising campaigns even the young Queen Elizabeth was captivated by Horrockses Fashions.

The exhibition draws together fashion photography, archive material and personal stories, but it is the breathtaking costume that most dramatically captures an iconic period in fashion history.

The garments featured were designed by Horrockses Fashions on loan from private lenders, organised by the Fashion and Textile Museum, London.

Cromwell Road - South Kensington

25/01/2012 > 05/06/2012

Room 17a
Free admission



This display will showcase the world’s largest pieces of cloth made from spider silk. It will include a brocaded shawl made from the silk of more than one million female golden orb-weaver spiders collected in the highlands of Madagascar, as well as a cape on public display for the first time. The display will also feature background material and a short film revealing the process.

17/03/2012 > 30/09/2013

Room 104
In association with the Society of British Theatre Designers

Exploring the theme of transformation, this display will reveal contemporary designs for performance by over 30 British Theatre Designers. It will provide an intriguing insight into the designers’ creative process and will include costumes, set models, photographs, drawings, sound productions and lighting designs. Designs include Sutra by Anthony Gormley, War Horse by Rae Smith and Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball Tour by Es Devlin.

31/03/2012 > 12/08/2012

Tickets go on sale 16 January 2012
£12 in person at the V&A

British Design 1948–2012: Innovation in the Modern Age will celebrate the best of British post-war art and design from the 1948 ‘austerity’ Games to the summer of 2012. The exhibition will highlight significant moments in the history of British design and how the country continues to nurture artistic talent and be a world leader in creativity and design.

Drawing on the V&A’s unrivalled collections and complemented by works drawn from across Britain, the exhibition will bring together over 300 objects including product design, fashion and textiles, furniture, ceramics and glass, graphics, photography, architecture, fine art and sculpture. It will tell the story of British design in all its forms featuring much-loved objects such as Robin Day’s Polyprop Chair, a mural by John Piper from The Festival of Britain,  fine art by David Hockney and Henry Moore, fashion including an Alexander McQueen evening gown, plus the first E-type Jaguar car ever put on public display. Contemporary works including a model of Zaha Hadid’s London Aquatics Centre will also be shown, alongside designs rediscovered for the exhibition.

Tradition & Modernity
The first section of the exhibition explores how the drive for modernity in the reconstruction of Britain after World War II was often mediated by a preoccupation with the past and with British traditions. Whilst sometimes these two strands within British culture were mutually exclusive, often they came together to create an idiosyncratic and tempered modernity. A focus on three spaces will explore how different aspects of British life reflected this tension between tradition and modernity: the City, the Land and the Home.
 
Subversion
The second section of the exhibition takes up the theme of Subversion as a determining characteristic of much British design from the 1960s to the 90s. Challenging the traditional hierarchies and tastes favoured by the generation who had fought in the War, it charts the explosion of counter cultural forms of creativity from the late 1950s onwards – from the advent of Pop, through swinging 60s London, to 70s punk and the creation of ‘Cool Britannia’ in the 1990s, which saw a new generation of artists and designers gain international acclaim. This section will set these themes within the contexts of the Studio and the Street.

Innovation & Creativity
British design has always been associated with great originality and innovation and the last section of the exhibition explores British creativity in relation to industry, new technologies and architecture. It will demonstrate how British companies have created some of the most iconic objects, technologies and buildings of the last 50 years. With the election of a Conservative government in 1979 and the development of Thatcherite ideas around enterprise, this section charts the decline of Britain as a manufacturing nation. It explores how new attitudes towards commodity culture and global connections developed during the 1980s and fundamentally shifted the ways in which design was produced and consumed. The last three sections of the exhibition will suggest the spaces of the Factory, the Laboratory and the Architect’s practice.

19/05/2012 > 06/01/2013

Fashion Galleries
Room 40
Admission charges will apply

From spring 2012 the V&A celebrates the opening of the newly renovated Fashion Galleries with an exhibition of beautiful ballgowns, red carpet evening dresses and catwalk showstoppers. 

Displayed over two floors, Ballgowns: British Glamour Since 1950 will feature more than sixty designs for social events such as private parties, royal balls, state occasions and opening nights.

The exhibition will cover over sixty years of a strong British design tradition that continues to flourish. Eveningwear from the V&A’s vast collection, by designers including Victor Stiebel, Zandra Rhodes, Jonathan Saunders and Hussein Chalayan, will be on show alongside dresses fresh from the catwalk shows of Alexander McQueen, Giles Deacon, Erdem and Jenny Packham.

A selection of royal ballgowns will be on display, including a Norman Hartnell gown designed for Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Princess Diana’s ‘Elvis Dress’ designed by Catherine Walker and gowns worn by today’s young royals.

Ballgowns: British Glamour Since 1950 will also include dresses worn by actresses and celebrities including Elizabeth Hurley, Bianca Jagger and Sandra Bullock, and a stunning metallic leather dress created especially for the exhibition by innovative designer Gareth Pugh.

Textiles & Dress en de Textile Study Rooms

20/10/2012 > 27/01/2013
 
Costume designers are storytellers, historians, social commentators and anthropologists. Movies are about people, and costume design plays a pivotal role in bringing these people to life. Hollywood Costume illuminates the costume designer’s process in the creation of character from script to screen including the changing social and technological context in which they have worked over the last century.

This ground-breaking exhibition includes over 100 of the most iconic and unforgettable film characters from a century of Hollywood filmmaking, 1912–2012. Hollywood Costume takes us on a three-gallery journey from Charlie Chaplin through the Golden Age of Hollywood to the cutting edge design for Avatar [2009, Costume Designer Deborah L. Scott, Mayes Rubio] and John Carter of Mars [2012, Costume Designer Mayes Rubio]

Act 1, Deconstruction, puts us in the shoes of the costume designer and illuminates the process of designing a character from script to screen

Act 2, Dialogue, examines the key collaborative role of the costume designer within the creative team

Act 3, Finale, celebrates the most beloved characters in the history of Hollywood and the ‘silver screen’.

Bringing together over 100 of the most iconic movie costumes from across a century of film-making, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the clothes worn by unforgettable and beloved characters such as Dorothy, Indiana Jones, Scarlett O'Hara, Jack Sparrow, Holly Golightly and Darth Vader.

Cambridge Heath Road
naast Bethnal Green Tube Station

Children's Costume

Imagine over six thousand items of children's clothing! The Museum has the largest public collection of children's costume in the UK. Its scope ranges from tiny garments for newborns to a kaftan worn by a student dropout, and includes accessories, underwear, nightwear, fancy dress, uniforms, and clothes for baptism and mourning as well as main garments such as dresses, shoes, coats and trousers. The earliest item is a baby's swaddling band of 1575-1600 and the most recent is a boy's shirt and jeans from…

83 Bermondsey Street
London SE1 3XF

16/03/2012 > 16/06/2012

Britain was at the forefront of international textile design in the 1950s and 1960s. Three women – Lucienne Day, Jacqueline Groag and Marian Mahler – led this movement. ‘Designing Women’, the forthcoming exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum, explores these women’s pioneering role in combining art and manufacturing to change the direction of the modern design industry.

The art of textile design radically changed after the Second World War and three women artists working in England in the 1950s were pivotal in this artistic revolution.

The drab days of the War were transformed by the fresh, progressive designs of Lucienne Day (1917–2010), Jacqueline Groag (1903–86) and Marian Mahler (1911– 83). Designing Women: Post-war British textiles showcases their work beginning with Lucienne Day’s ‘Calyx’ pattern of 1951, featured at the Festival of Britain, and moving through textile commissions of the 1960s and 70s. The exhibition features more than 100 works.

Original artist designs with bold abstract pattern, as well as the use of saturated colour, marked a dramatic departure from conventional furnishing fabrics. This new wave of bold textile designs, helped to bring the influences of the art world, in its most recent, refreshing, and largely abstract forms, into the contemporary home.

16/03/2012 > 16/06/2012

How do you design and create a printed textile? This special display explores the process from conception, design development and through to manufacturing. The Fashion and Textile Museum has been given unique access to the Sanderson studio as we follow the development of vintage-inspired textile ‘Hayward’ from the British heritage brand’s Fifties Collection.

 

22/03/2012 > 16/06/2012

Vintage handkerchiefs have become a source of inspiration for contemporary fashion brands. With beautiful examples from the 1920s to 1950s, this new exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum celebrates early twentieth-century handkerchief design in a magnificent display of colour and pattern.

04/02/2012 > 31/12/2012

The catsuit that Olympic gold medallist Amy Williams wore at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010 will go on display at the Fashion Museum in a display SPORT and FASHION, opening in Bath on 04 February 2012.

In the year of the 2012 Olympics, this special display at the Fashion Museum in Bath will examine the close connection between active sportswear and fashion by showcasing examples of historic sportswear from the museum collection alongside modern fashions and the very best of today’s sportswear. 

Historic highlights will include a cream wool suit with red and blue stripes worn by a member of the Park Tobogganing Club in London in the 1880s, and also beautifully tailored Victorian century riding habits. There will be monogrammed cream silk tennis dresses from the 1920s, and swimsuits and swimming costumes for men and for women. All are part of the Fashion Museum’s world-famous collection of historic dress.

Fashion has continually borrowed from sport, both in fabric and cut as well as the look and styling of garments, and the display will also incorporate work by up-to-the-minute fashion designers who have been inspired by active sportswear, including Pam Hogg who has created second skin stage-wear for pop star Jessie J. 

04/02/2012 > 31/12/2012

This dazzling new display at the Fashion Museum invites visitors to be inspired by the glitz and glamour of evening wear fashion over the last 100 years. Featuring eighteen show stopping evening gowns and cocktail dresses, Glamour presents a glittering array of sumptuous silks and bejewelled creations guaranteed to make anyone the belle of the ball.

From luxurious ladylike to razzle dazzle party girl, this selection of the past century’s finest evening ensembles includes a 1965 light purple silk satin gown with applied beads, sequins and silver thread embroidery by Norman Hartnell and a red Harrods dress with applied beads and sequins, ca. 1960s. Glamour will also feature designs by Hardy Amies, Michael Sherard and Zandra Rhodes. The most up to date is a Holly Fulton dress from 2011 featuring her signature use of surface decoration and especially lent to the Fashion Museum for the display.