Step Inside the Fashion Matrix

Radical Fashion was the V&A’s ground-breaking fashion exhibition. The exhibition’s very title invited a radical response, as did the brief. We were challenged to create an exhibition environment that felt ‘like falling into the pages of a fashion magazine of the future’.

Working closely with the V&A’s curatorial team, we selected 11 cutting-edge fashion designers to create and collaborate on an installation set within our constructed environment. From Alexander McQueen to Issey Miyake, each designer’s unique impact on the international fashion scene was brought to life in the exhibition.

We created an exhibition environment that was, in effect, a series of spaces within a space. Each space acted like a 3D canvas for the designers’ installations. The challenge lay in creating an environment that was beautiful in and of itself, but careful not to distract from the beauty inherent in each designers’ installation. In search of solutions, we turned to tensile architecture and the work of Anish Kapoor and James Turrell where light and volume seem to dissolve borders and create internal horizons. This inspired our design: a matrix of back-lit translucent materials stretched over the ceiling to dissolve the borders of the existing galleries away and create a series of wide-angle spaces used to house each designer’s installation.

The result was a kaleidoscopic view into the haute couture universe. Mirrors tricked and deceived, creating an infinity effect in a metaphor for the unlimited creative territories that artists inhabit. Garments dangled overhead, mannequins emerged out of nowhere, infrared multimedia shows stretched from floor to ceiling. The audience became a performing element, consciously and unconsciously. A specially commissioned soundscape, designed by David Toop, acted as a backdrop to the performance and a connective tissue joining up each installation. The effect was described at the time as being like walking in ‘a birdcage looking out at these weird, air creature-like clothes’.

The exhibition broke new ground. It challenged long-held perceptions of what fashion is – art or craft? – and what place is has in a national museum. Its lasting legacy has been to carve out a place for fashion in the grand walls a national art museum and open the doors for the type of blockbuster popular culture exhibitions that the V&A is so renowned for today.