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Design Museum

Design

REBEL at the Design Museum

Went to see this fashion exhibition at The Design Museum, which is in collaboration with the British Fashion Council (BFC) and celebrates the 30th anniversary of the BFC’s NEWGEN programme. The show, sponsored by Alexander McQueen, focuses on the work in the early careers of design talent that has been supported by the programme.

Loved this Giles Deacon suit.

Highlights include the swan dress controversially worn by Björk at the 2001 Oscars, Harry Styles’ Steven Stokey Daley outfit from his video for ‘Golden’, and Sam Smith’s inflatable latex suit by HARRI from this year’s BRIT Awards. Collections and work by JW Anderson, Wales Bonner, Erdem, Molly Goddard, Christopher Kane, Simone Rocha, Russell Sage, and many more.


And this ear cuff was extraordinary.

The show is great, and is on until 11 February 2024. Go see.

15th November 2023
Design

Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics

You’ve only got a few weeks left to see one of the best exhibitions in London this year.

Hope to Nope at the Design Museum is stunning. It explores the intersections between design, technology, politics and protest over the last 10 years, and traces how graphic design and technology have become such powerful forms of protest.

The range of materials, formats and subject matter is vast – with work from established designers such as Shepherd Fairey to grass roots messages and campaigns about Grenfell, the events in Catalonia and feminism in China.

There’s a quote in a recent review in The Guardian that I thought particularly apt: “As you drift through the space, one of the overriding themes is quite how powerless the traditional tools of professionalised design and marketing now appear to be in contrast to the DIY alternatives, whether they be pasted on the wall or shared on Facebook.”

Go see it. Seriously. Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics is on until 12 August.

And if you fancy making an afternoon of it, pick up the Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier show on the ground floor. The Museum has a joint ticket price and it’s well worth seeing while you are there.

15th July 2018
Design

California: Designing freedom

California is one of my favourite places on the planet and when I saw this exhibition advertised, I was very keen to go and to understand more about how it came to have such a powerful influence on contemporary design. Not only that, I’d not yet been to the new Design Museum in Kensington, so it was being able to combine both, along with it being my Mother-in-Law’s Birthday that provided the perfect prompting for a day out.

The exhibition explores the ideas around how 60’s counterculture of surfers, feminists, gay and black activists and hippies all influenced the California design movement that has developed into Silicon Valley tech culture. It makes a bold point about how this has had such an effect on all of our lives that it means that we are now all, in some ways, now Californians.

The artefacts on show – which open with a shining sun and include films, magazine covers, posters, hardware, physical items, virtual reality, skateboards and acid tabs are grouped in 5 ‘zones’, all underpinned by the ‘freedom’ theme:

  • Go where you want
  • See what you want
  • Say what you want
  • Make what you want
  • Join what you want

The exhibition doesn’t cover the usual territory that predecessors have – mid-century modernism; rather picking up in the ’60’s and coming right through to the present – and the near/now future, including the self-driving car. It’s packed with brilliant things to look at, read and imerse in. To be honest, the original concept paintings from Blade Runner are a highlight, and pretty much worth going to the show just for those.

I loved, loved, loved this exhibition.

We also took the opportunity to have a mooch round the Design Museum – which, actually was a bit unimpressive. There’s some lovely things, but it all seems very crammed in. They’ve given so much space over to the atrium/centre of the building, that it feels like the exhibits are secondary, which is a real shame. However, I loved seeing these typographical design systems for Britain’s roads, and the beautiful Kohnioor font from the Indian Type Foundry.

We lunched after at The Bluebird cafe in Chelsea. There were martini’s, obvs.

The ‘California: Designing Freedom’ show at the Design Museum runs until 15 October 2017, so there’s still time to take in the California vibe. To purchase tickets, visit the Design Museum’s website.

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25th August 2017