LONDON.- The Design Museum today revealed some of the trailblazing fashion designs that will go on display in a major upcoming exhibition showcasing London’s unique fashion culture on the world stage.
REBEL: 30 Years of London Fashion sponsored by Alexander McQueen will celebrate over 300 young designers — the NEWGEN alumni — and their sensational impact on the global fashion scene.
The swan dress controversially worn by Björk at the 2001 Oscars, Harry Styles’ Steven Stokey Daley outfit from his video for ‘Golden’ and a unique replica of Sam Smith's inflatable latex suit by HARRI from this year’s BRIT Awards are amongst the highlight objects in the show announced today.
Visitors will also see the revolutionary neon collection from Christopher Kane’s debut catwalk collection, the upcycled Union Jack jacket by Russell Sage that was worn by Kate Moss for Vogue, and a vast Molly Goddard blue ruffle dress that went viral on Instagram when worn by pop-superstar Rihanna.
These exuberant, rebellious and radical garments will all be brought together for REBEL: 30 Years of London Fashion sponsored by Alexander McQueen which will feature nearly 100 innovative fashion looks from ground-breaking debut and early collections. Many of these creations have entered pop-culture history — and launched global design careers. These items will be shown alongside films, drawings, memorabilia and never-before-seen archive material from some of the most well-known contemporary UK-based designers.
Opening in September to coincide with London Fashion Week, this landmark exhibition will be one of the most wide-ranging surveys of contemporary British fashion culture ever staged in the UK. It will offer an unprecedented look at how careers in fashion are forged, and the multitude of opportunities London’s fashion scene offers young creatives.
At its heart, the exhibition tells the story of hundreds of fearless young designers, who have transformed the fashion landscape through their talent and brilliance. The Design Museum has worked directly with these designers to select some of the most important and groundbreaking pieces from their personal archives. Many of the items going on show have not been seen in public since their debut.
REBEL is a collaboration between the Design Museum and the British Fashion Council (BFC) and will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the BFC’s NEWGEN programme. All the designers featured in the show were supported in the early stages of their careers through NEWGEN. It will be guest-curated by BFC Ambassador for Emerging Talent Sarah Mower MBE, and co-curated by the Design Museum Senior Curator Rebecca Lewin.
NEWGEN was established by the British Fashion Council in 1993. It is an initiative that supports the best emerging fashion design talent in the UK, and aims to build creative, responsible businesses for the future. It has helped nurture the careers of hundreds of designers and businesses, launching many of them onto the international stage. Alumni featured in the exhibition include Lee Alexander McQueen, Christopher Kane, Charles Jeffrey, Christopher Raeburn, Erdem, Henry Holland, Kim Jones, J.W. Anderson, Mary Katrantzou, Molly Goddard, Roksanda, Simone Rocha, Stuart Vevers, Priya Ahluwalia, Saul Nash, Grace Wales Bonner, Bianca Saunders and many more.
A major highlight of the show will be Marjan Pejoski’s ‘swan’ dress which was worn to the Oscars in 2001 by Icelandic singer Björk. The eye-catching item generated immediate shock, intrigue and global headlines, but it has since gone on to become one of the most well-known red-carpet looks in history. Pejoski was born in Macedonia and came to London to take a bachelor's degree at Central Saint Martins. The dress was first unveiled at Pejoski’s NEWGEN runway show in London for Autumn/Winter 2001 where it was spotted by the singer, who also wore it on the cover for her fourth studio album Vespertine. The now-iconic dress has only ever been on public display twice before — both times in New York — meaning that its display in REBEL marks the very first time it has been seen in Britain — and the city it was designed and created in — since it was first unveiled here 22 years ago.
Seven months on from the 2023 BRIT Awards, a unique replica of Sam Smith’s eye-catching red-carpet will go on public display for the first time. Smith’s large, custom-made inflated latex suit made global headlines and was created by HARRI, the brand belonging to designer Harikrishnan Keezhathil Surendran Pillai. The look was created for Smith in just five days ahead of the award ceremony, and this replica has been made especially for the exhibition. The son of a latex farmer in Kerala, India, HARRI came to study menswear at London College of Fashion and set up his business in London in 2020 upon graduation. His latex creations are made on his father’s farm in India.
Steven Stokey Daley studied menswear in London at the University of Westminster and graduated in the Class of 2020 show. Shortly after, his collection was worn by mega-star Harry Styles for the music video for “Golden.” Daley’s design was inspired by the uniforms of the boys at Harrow school, and offers his personal queer, working-class take on the style of the British public school system. Visitors to the exhibition will see his original floral Oxford Bags trousers — tailored from upcycled curtains — alongside other items from the same collection which were made from fabric that was donated to fashion schools across the UK by Alexander McQueen.
While BFC NEWGEN draws from talent across the UK, as well the generations of international graduates who have started their businesses here, it is London that has always been the major inspiration and catalyst for the programme’s young designers. The exhibition offers an exploration on how the city’s unique fashion scene has incubated fashion talent, and how they used the capital to launch their success on the global stage. London has nurtured nearly all the NEWGEN designers since its inception, whether as the place they studied, first showed a collection, or established their network.
REBEL: 30 Years of London Fashion is organised into sections that reflect many of the spaces which have been the creative catalyst for London’s young designers over the past three decades. These include ‘Art School’, which will show objects highlighting how London’s art education establishments have uniquely incubated individuality, and ‘Backstage Pass’, where visitors will get ‘VIP access’ to the spaces and moments that take place just before a catwalk show. They will see clothing, shoes, jewellery, headwear and makeup which together evoke the pre-catwalk buzz of a show.
In ‘Runway’, visitors will be able join the front row of an exclusive show to see six ground-breaking presentations that had a major impact on the fashion world. Collections by Christopher Kane, Craig Green, JW Anderson, Meadham Kirchhoff, Wales Bonner and Sinéad O’Dwyer fill the catwalk.
All of the more-than-300 designers who have graduated from the NEWGEN programme will be referenced in the exhibition. It is hoped the show will inspire the next generation of fashion designers by showing how they can develop a career in the fashion industry.
Tim Marlow, the Design Museum Director and CEO, said: “We are delighted to be collaborating with the British Fashion Council to showcase and explore the youthful energy, creative vision and rebellious spirit that is so central to their NEWGEN programme. Visitors are going to be stunned by many of instantly recognisable fashion items on show, but we hope they’ll also be captivated by the breadth, depth, diversity and world class talent that has emerged from the London fashion scene in the past three decades.”
