Martin Grant
Celebrating the work of the Australian-born Paris-based fashion designer, this major new exhibition is the largest of Martin Grant’s career. Drawn from the NGV collection, including many works donated by the designer from his own personal archive as well as loans from his family and friends, Martin Grant encompasses more than four decades of the designer’s career. Beginning in the mid-1980s in Melbourne, the exhibition continues through the early 1990s when Grant re-established his eponymous label in Paris, and extends to his most recent collections.
Throughout his illustrious career, Martin Grant’s clients have included his muses Cate Blanchett and Lee Radziwill, as well as Naomi Campbell, Juliette Binoche, Rebel Wilson, and Lady Gaga. Conceived in close collaboration with the designer, the exhibition reflects Grant’s design sensibility and aesthetic through fashion, photography, sketches, press clippings and runway footage.
A leading figure of the global fashion industry, Martin Grant is known for his reinterpretation of wardrobe classics, cleverly recalibrating historical silhouettes and period references to create timeless and sophisticated designs that exemplify his refined understanding of structure and volume. With an emphasis on form, each garment is constructed to maintain a direct relationship to the body as a sculptural form. This concerted restraint is underpinned by beautiful detailing and immaculate finishing, each the result of a deep appreciation of the traditional techniques that sit at the heart of bespoke tailoring and couture practices.
This exhibition offers an unprecedented insight into Martin Grant’s creative process and milieu, showcasing a design vocabulary where form, comfort and function are intertwined with enduring elegance.
Photos courtesy of National Gallery of Victoria.