The 40-year-long career of Paris-based and Australian-born fashion designer Martin Grant will be on display in a retrospective exhibition at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria starting next month.
It is Grant’s first-ever major full-career retrospect.
The long-running fashion designer is notable for his contemporary reinterpretations of wardrobe classics, and has dressed a range of international celebrities including the likes of Cate Blanchett, Lady Gaga, Blake Lively, Rebel Wilson, and Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan.
With close to 100 works drawn from the NGV Collection, alongside more than 40 loans from the designer's own personal archive and private collections, the exhibition surveys Grant’s four-decade career from the mid-1980s to the present day.
“After four decades dressing the biggest stars in the world, Martin Grant is coming home for his first major retrospective,” Victorian Minister for creative industries Colin Brooks said.
“This latest exhibition continues NGV’s run of spectacular fashion exhibitions, while celebrating the work of a Melbourne-born, global design leader.”
The exhibition also unpacks Grant’s creative process and milieu through photography, sketches, artworks, press clippings and runway footage.
Key features of the exhibition a display of eveningwear and ballgowns in monochromatic hues, each presented on specially designed invisible mannequins that float in mid air.
Grant’s signature outerwear – including tailored jackets, peacoats and trench coats – are also a feature.
NGV director Tony Ellwood AM said Grant is a self-taught designer who has captured the international fashion world’s attention.
“With a background in sculpture, he approaches fashion with a sculptor’s eye, creating garments that have a direct formal relationship to the body,” Ellwood said.
“In 2024, Grant gifted the NGV more than 200 works from his own personal archive, transforming our holdings of his work and making ours the most significant collection anywhere in the world.”
Martin Grant began his career as a young fashion designer in Melbourne in the mid-1980s. He was part of a thriving independent fashion scene and an active participant in the Fashion Design Council parades.
After six years of successfully running his own fashion label in Melbourne, Grant formally undertook studies in sculpture at the Victorian College of the Arts.
Travelling to the United Kingdom in 1990, Grant then worked for two London-based fashion houses before making the decision to move to Paris. Two years later, Grant re-established his fashion label and four years later opened his own boutique in the Marais district.
In 2003, Grant was invited to join Barney’s New York as artistic director of the Barney's Private Label, a tenure he held for 10-years, and in 2014 he designed uniforms for Qantas.
Of the world-premiere retrospective exhibition, Grant said: “The National Gallery of Victoria houses the largest and richest fashion collection in the southern hemisphere. To have my design career represented in this exhibition in Melbourne, the city of my birth, is a true privilege and an honour.”
The exhibition will open in March 2025.