Exhibition: The Krystyna Campbell-Pretty Fashion Gift (National Gallery of Victoria)

Jeanne Paquin, 1912

.... Or perhaps I should title this post "What I Did On My Autumn Holiday".

Krystyna Campbell-Pretty is a Melbourne philanthropist, and her gift to the National Gallery of Victoria is a $1.4 million collection of vintage haute couture acquired from Parisian collector Dominique Sirop.  The collection contains samples of the works of all the "big name" couturiers from Worth to Alexander McQueen.  It's now being exhibited at the NGV—for free!  

I was in Melbourne last week, so—need I say it?—naturally I went to the exhibition.  I went with a friend, who is more interested in craft than fashion, so while I admired the design, she admired the workmanship.  And there was plenty of both to enjoy.


The layout of this exhibition was unusual, in that it wasn't segregated from the rest of the collection in a separate wing or gallery.  Instead the curators decided to spread the displays throughout the 19th and 20th century British and European art collections.  This lead to some amusing and sometimes appropriate juxtapositions: a Dior day dress against a late-Georgian portrait of a lady in a white gown, a cluster of Art Deco evening wraps posed in front of a portrait of Nancy Cunard painted in 1919, and a couple of outfits by Yves Saint Laurent standing amidst a display of art and crafts furniture.  

(Unfortunately the layout of the exhibition, along with the lack of signage, made it a bit hard to navigate.  That's how we wound up starting in the middle of the exhibition, before realising it extended further back, both chronologically and physically!)

But what about the dresses themselves, you ask?

Schiaparelli, 1932-33 (left); Lelong, 1932 (right)

Need I say they were gorgeous?  They were.  The greater part of the collection was created from the 1910s to the 1960s, which is not only my special area of interest, but roughly covers the "Golden Age" of Haute Couture.  One large gallery was dedicated to fashions from around 1910 to 1939, with smaller galleries off either end leading to displays of 19th century costume on one hand, and 1940s and 1950s fashion on the other.

Dior, 1947 (left); Maggie Rouff, 1940 (right)

The clothes chosen for exhibition—especially the ones made before the war—tended to be mostly be either evening fashions, or clothes for gala occasions.  Even a display of  "little black dresses" at the centre of the main hall seemed to consist  mostly of  

little black evening dresses.  This is probably the result of natural selection: special occasion wear is more likely to be lovingly preserved than a skirt or an ordinary day dress (even if the day dress is made by a Parisian couturier!)  

On the other hand, tucked away in a corner there was one of Chanel's earliest designs: a casual jersey jacket, circa 1916!

One of the delights of this exhibition was a handful of works from fashion houses not well remembered these days, and seldom featured in the standard fashion histories.  I thus learned a bit about the houses of Boué Soeurs, Bruyére, Carven and Felix.

At front left: Jacques Heim, 1950

Another delight was a scattering of items from the National Gallery's research collection in glass cases.  These included magazines (including early, rare issues of Vogue, L'Officiel, Harper's Bazar and Gazette du bon ton).  They also included photographs.  Some of these were from the archives of glossy fashion magazines, but others were taken in-house (by Givenchy, for example) in order to prevent design piracy.  There were also sketches: everything from rough drafts of a designer's first ideas, through to annotated worksheets, and to polished drawings used to publicise a house's finished designs.  

Yves Saint Laurent, 1971

So to summarise:  "The Krystyna Campbell-Pretty Fashion Gift" is an exhibition any vintage fashion lover will enjoy.  It's on until July the 14th, so I encourage anyone who can visit it to do so!

For those who can't make it to Melbourne, there's a book!  Running to 307 glossy pages, it's excellent value for money, and can be purchased at the NGV's store.  It covers the history of high fashion from the late 19th century to the early 21st century, with brief essays on specific themes (the Jazz Age, for example, or evening dress in the 1950s) and on individual designers.  It is fill with high quality photographs (much better than my grainy shots taken with a phone camera) and features a brief interview with Krystyna Campbell-Pretty on how she came to donate her "Gift" to the National Gallery of Victoria.

• The Krystyna Campbell-Pretty fashion gift / by Paola Di Trocchio; Danielle Whitfield ; Françoise Tétart-Vittu; Olivier Gabet.
• Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2019.
• ISBN: 9781925432596