The Fashion Show Gets Its Own Show

Chanel’s supermarket sweep. McQueen’s spray-paint robots. Margiela sending models down a Paris street at midnight. The fashion show has always been more than the clothes – and V&A Dundee’s Catwalk is the first exhibition to really take that seriously.

Co-produced with Germany’s Vitra Design Museum, the show pulls together 350 objects across 125 years of runway history: original garments, rare footage, backstage photography, miniature Prada set models, even a raised catwalk lined with actual looks from Galliano, Raf Simons and McQueen. One unexpected highlight: four Balenciaga couture dolls from 1945, created when French designers staged a fashion show in the Louvre while Europe was still at war – on display in the UK for the first time.

It’s an exhibition that asks what a fashion show actually is – and why, despite everything, we still need the lights to go down and someone to walk.

Tickets £7–£16 | vam.ac.uk/dundee