V&A Museum Archives - Smudgetikka

On 29 February, the V&A Museum in Kensington opens Europe’s first major exhibition on kimono. The ultimate symbol of Japan, Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk presents the garment as a dynamic and constantly evolving icon of fashion. The exhibition reveals the sartorial and social significance of the kimono from the 1660s to the present day, both in Japan and in the rest of the world. Rare 17th and 18th ...

Mary Quant retrospective at the V&A Museum opens on April 6th to the public. This exhibition covers 20 years of the 60’s pop fashion hero’s career from the very first boutique Bazaar in the Kings Rd which was opened in 1955 and whose outfits whilst groundbreaking at the time seem rather drab now by comparison to the later designs from 1960 onwards as the Youth-quake hit and ...

The stunning iconic Frida Kahlo show at the V&A Museum, Frida Kahlo – Making Herself Up opens on June 16th and runs till November 4th 2018. The show has an emphasis on how Frida fashioned her identity against the struggle she had with bad health due to Polio in her childhood and a devastating near fatal bus crash when she was just 18 years old which weakened her ...

The V&A Museum tackles fashion sustainability in its new fashion exhibition for the summer season Fashioned from Nature which opened this weekend just in time for Earth Day around the globe. Covering the past from 1600 to the present day the introductory garments show how fashion’s inspiration not only has come from nature but also taken the creatures themselves with the use of feathers, fur and even beetle ...

The incredible Exhibition Road Quarter new V&A Museum entrance was previewed yesterday and opens tomorrow evening with a flourish and a week of special activities labelled the ‘Reveal’ Festival. This beautiful new entrance includes a huge underground excavation which becomes the new Sainsbury Wing and was designed by Amanda Levete Associates with engineering undertaken by Arup Associates. The entrance opens onto ...

You Say You Want a Revolution – Records and Rebels 1966 – 1970 is the new exhibition blockbuster at the V&A Museum which opens on Saturday 10th September. Anyone with an interest in the amazing 1960’s youth-quake will love this exhibition, there is just so much material that it seems incredible it all happened in just 5 years and graphic design aficionados will especially love it for all the album and wall art displayed. I ...

Paul Strand photography and documentary film work is shown in a new retrospective at the V&A Museum. He was one of photography’s early pioneers, experimenting with art prints and documentary styles that are still the common form today. The V&A museum has also acquired nine rare original photographs from the American photographer’s visit to South Uist in the Scottish Hebrides which formed part of the collection in his rare book ...

One of the earliest innovators of Victorian photography Julia Margaret Cameron is celebrated at a new exhibition at the V&A Museum for the bicentenary of her birth. Hers is an extraordinary story, given a camera by her daughter for her 48th birthday she became absorbed by the new discipline and devoted herself to photography using many of her friends and their children who lived locally in the Isle of Wight. So ...

There’s not much to say about Savage Beauty Alexander McQueen, the retrospective at the V&A Museum in London other than please just go and see it, this is so much more than just a fashion exhibition. Stunning in every way, the exhibits are so well done, the body of work so impressive, innovative and well displayed that it takes the breath away. It really ...

Another cracking exhibition from the V&A Museum – Horst: Photographer of Style is a visual feast and a history of style in the early 20th Century. Born in Germany in 1906 as Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann (the Bohrmann was changed to the simpler Horst during the Second World War) Horst’s career began as an assistant to Le Corbusier in 1930 but all changed when he met ...