Are you heading out of town for the Australia Day long weekend?
If you haven’t made plans to escape the city yet then I highly recommend taking a day trip or overnight stay in Bendigo. It’s the last week of Bendigo Art Gallery‘s amazing fashion exhibition, Modern Love , which closes on Sunday 2 February.
In this exhibition Bendigo Art Gallery has curated approximately 60 items of fashion from the collection of the FIDM Museum at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles. The items come from the world’s most influential designers from the past 40 years, including Vivienne Westwood, Comme des Garcons, Dior and Versace.
Some of my highlights included:
The neoprene dress by Melburnian Toni Maticevski‘s from his SS13/14 collection. The skilful tailoring and draping of rubber-like material that would be required to form this dress is extraordinary.
The architectural back detail is particularly stunning and for me evokes the outlines of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Musuem. Also take the time to drool over his beautiful pieces in the video presentation of one of his recent catwalk shows. Maticevski is the only Australian designer represented in Modern Love and the first Asutralian to be included in the collection of the FIDM Museum.
This fantasy evening gown by Alexander McQueen. I am a fan of the New Look silhouette and this dress was made especially for FIDM. Notice the delicate peacock motif recalling a ‘Britannia’ influence and the layers upon layers of tea-dyed cream tulle with frayed edges blurring one tier into another to create the 50s bell shape.
Issey Miyake‘s bold sculptural coat and dress from his famous ‘Pleats Please’ range. The fabric has been heat-set into minuscule pleats, with the wearer’s body lending shape to the garment as they move.
There’s a large proportion of Vivienne Westwood garments in the display, with my favourite being this mini-crini and amazing ‘rocking-horse’ platform soled shoes. Who knows how you’re supposed to wear them but they look fabulous!
The exhibition consists of only two rooms but if you read every plaque, listen to the audio intro and watch both video screens in their entirety then a trip to Modern Love will probably take 1.5 – 2 hours. Which leaves you plenty of time to explore other parts of historic goldrush Bendigo.
If you’re looking for tips on other things to do, places to eat and where to stay read my Bendigo guide (Part 1 and Part 2).