Wes Anderson: The Archives at the Design Museum, London

22 March 2026, by Madison Hough

In this week's blog post, member and previous Costume Society grant award winner Madison Hough reviews Wes Anderson: The Archives, currently on view at the Design Museum.

Wes Anderson: The Archives leaves an impression. Plucked right from the filmmaker's personal archive, Anderson’s charming world is revealed through over 700 objects at the Design Museum, on view until 26th July 2026. As curators Johanna Agerman Ross and Dr Lucia Savi explain, the show emerged from “a conversation between the Design Museum and our colleagues at the French film museum Cinémathèque Française and Wes Anderson,” forming a three-way collaboration that ultimately shaped its narrative and tone. 

From the moment of arrival, devotees will recognise the concierge booth replica stationed at the entrance – an immaculately placed portal into the nostalgic world of Anderson’s cinematic archive. After indulging in an obligatory photo masquerading as Monsiuer Gustave H., the legendary concierge of the titular Grant Budapest Hotel of Zubrowka, visitors are ushered into the archive proper. The journey begins in a room containing a single wooden storage box, beneath a sign reading No Crying – a nod to the placard above the office door of the formidable editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray) in The French Dispatch. The gallery walls, awash in varying shades of red, form a carefully chosen backdrop that immediately evokes Anderson’s unmistakable visual panache.

The sartorial realm of Anderson’s oeuvre is realised before the first costumes make their exhibition debut. A small illustration titled Map of a Young Movie Director (1999) is the first object unboxed from the archive. Gifted by his brother, Eric Chase Anderson, for his 30th birthday, this playful snapshot of Anderson’s daily routine caricatures him in a manner akin to his fictional characters, using costume design as a means of characterisation. Depicting the uniformity of Anderson’s style – clad with a cycle of five select seasonal layering tops, an optional red cap, transluscent glasses, headphones, beige trousers, a leather belt, argyle socks, and red New Balance sneakers (his affinity for red long-established) – Eric reveals that behind the scenes his brother emulates the signature style that permeates his films. This opening object signals that biography and authorship will quietly underpin the display. As Agerman Ross and Savi note, while Anderson’s films are “at the centre of the narrative,” personal materials such as notebooks, work-in-progress scripts and Polaroids are deliberately interwoven. The result is not simply a retrospective, but what they describe as “a glimpse into the complex and fascinating world Wes Anderson imagines for his stories.” 

When I spoke with curators Johanna Agerman Ross and Dr. Lucia Savi, they emphasized how costume design serves as an essential key to unlocking Anderson's world: Ever since Owen Wilson and his fellow actors donned bright yellow boiler suits for the Hinkley Cold Storage heist in Bottle Rocket, the costumes in Wes Anderson’s films have transcended the silver screen to leave their mark on popular fashion and design. We were always conscious of this as a lens that we wanted to take on his work, especially as Anderson himself is so involved in conceiving of them. He often indicates the colours, cuts, brands and even materials of a character’s outfit in his films’ scripts. Crucial to his world building, costumes not only define the film’s aesthetics, but they also help the actors fully embody and connect with the part they are playing. 

The exhibition includes more than 40 costumes, many created by longtime collaborator Milena Canonero, alongside partnerships with houses such as Adidas, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Fendi. The curators emphasise that costume is never decorative in Anderson’s cinema; it is structural.

The exhibition unfolds chronologically, each gallery devoted to a single film. This structure, Agerman Ross and Savi explain, allows every project to stand alone while remaining “in connection with the other films of Anderson’s filmography.” Beginning with Bottle Rocket, visitors trace the evolution of a creative network that began at the University of Texas at Austin, where Anderson met Owen and Luke Wilson. Polaroids and early ephemera introduce figures who would become central collaborators: Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe and Adrien Brody among them. 

Anderson’s close involvement in shaping the exhibition also opened doors. The curators describe how sustained conversations with him and his team provided access to key collaborators, including Eric Chase Anderson, Milena Canonero, Roman Coppola, Alexandre Desplat and photographer Laura Wilson. Their insights, the curators note, “form the backbone of the exhibition as well as the catalogue produced alongside the show.” What emerges is not a singular auteur portrait but a dense web of creative exchange.

Murray and Schwartzman reunite in Rushmore, Anderson’s offbeat coming-of-age film. Here, we see the first costume display, a trio of looks which notably focuses on a sole character: Max Fischer (Schwartzmann). The carefully curated trio of looks worn by Fischer throughout the film visually map his ambition, his insecurity and his eventual self-acceptance throughout the film. We watch Max – an undeniably unlikable character – transform from an over-adorned prep school boy desperate to belong, to a figure in unkempt clothing that signals his fall from grace, and finally into mature, understated formal wear that reflects his authentic, composed self. An ephemeral artefact – a handmade Rushmore school badge created by Schwartzman for his audition – underscores the central role of costume and prop-making in bringing Anderson’s characters to life. 

With The Royal Tenenbaums, the power of costuming becomes even more pronounced. The full wardrobe of the Tenenbaum family is displayed, each character assigned a single iconic outfit worn throughout the film as a visual marker of arrested development and inability to move past their childhood success. Childhood achievements are reinforced through accompanying props, such as Margot Tennenbaum’s The Three Plays, a collection of her word as a child prodigy playwright.

The following gallery brings The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou to life through clever exhibition design. Born from Anderson’s childhood fascination with the French diving pioneer and oceonographer, Jacques Cousteau, this movie pays homage while simultaneously parodying his adventures. Sea-creature props appear suspended in clear vitrines beneath Team Zissou’s uniforms, as if submerged underwater. The crew’s matching blue suits and hand-knitted red caps unite them visually, while personalised flourishes – Klaus’s pompom, Vikram’s turban, Ned’s spotlight patch – designed by costume designer Milena Canonero, reflect their individual identities within the collective. 

The next two galleries traverse vastly different emotional landscapes, moving from The Darjeeling Limited to Moonrise Kingdom. In The Darjeeling Limited, costume and set design converge through collaborations with Indian block printers and textile makers. A miniature model of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—anchors the space, alongside the Whitman brothers’ monogrammed suitcases, adorned with hand-painted animal motifs. Although branded with the fictional label “François Voltaire,” the luggage was in fact created in collaboration with Marc Jacobs during his tenure at Louis Vuitton; a commercial iteration was released in the brand’s Autumn/Winter 2025 collection under Pharrell Williams. In contrast, Moonrise Kingdom immerses visitors in the youthful fantasy of Sam Shakusky and Suzy Bishop, with the canoe from their escape guiding viewers toward the next phase of Anderson’s career. 

Accepting a momentary reprieve from live-action, Anderson embarks on a new cinematic adventure in Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs. These films demonstrate that costume design is no less vital at miniature scale. If anything, it is enhanced as Anderson brings his puppets to life. Hair tests for canine puppets sit alongside final garments, illustrating what the curators describe as the archive’s astonishing depth. Visiting Anderson’s storage spaces repeatedly, they recall leaving each time “wanting to go back and to delve deeper into its content.” Beyond pristine film-used props, the archive contains correspondence, material tests and developmental sketches—evidence of filmmaking as a prolonged act of refinement. Just as the human roles in his previous films, the characters in Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs, are realised through their wardrobes. An entire display is devoted to Nutmeg, a show dog from Isle of Dogs, tracing her costume’s development through sketches by Juman Malouf. Nearby, Mr. Fox’s corduroy suit reveals the painstaking material choices made by puppet makers Ian Mackinnon and Peter Saunders, culminating in a brown corduroy designed by Scabal in London. 

One of the exhibition’s most charming details is a series of wall cut-outs offering glimpses into forthcoming worlds. From the realm of miniatures, you catch a glimpse of some of Anderson’s larger feature films looming in the distance. The Grand Budapest Hotel appears on the horizon, heralded by the original model of the hotel displayed as if perched on a distant hill. Though entirely fictional, the miniature hotel was no less lavish than the ‘real’ hotel evoked in the film. The film elapses three timelines, the 1930s, 60s and 80s, brought together by a gamut of characters with sumptuous costumes abound. Even the concierge and the bell boy bolsters opulent outfits, befit with royal purple jackets and a matching cap for the bell boy. Here, Willem Dafoe’s character Jopling appears clad head-to-toe in Prada, marking another notable designer collaboration.

As Anderson’s films grow in gravitas, so too does the exhibition design. For The French Dispatch, this is aided by ten floor to ceiling paintings known as the ‘Concrete Masterpiece’ by the faux artist Moses Rosenthaler, a mentally unstable incarcerated artist known in the film for experimenting with unusual materials such as pigeon blood. The actual artist of Ten Reinforced Cement Aggregate (Load-bearing) Murals is the artist Sandro Kopp who was given just three months to create the work. A striking vignette pairs Moses’s paint-splattered robes and broom with J.K.L. Berensen’s tangerine silk chiffon caftan – hand-painted with the illusion of cascading yellow feather – another triumph by Milena Canonero. Art, artist, and art criticism converge here in a tableau that feels unmistakably Andersonian. 

If props were not the key to bringing Anderson’s films to the exhibition realm up before, they make themselves known now. Absent of elaborate costumes, the small display devoted to The Phoenician Scheme consists largely of meticulously organised cardboard boxes—containers for the ambitions of Anatole “Zsa-zsa” Korda, a collector whose compulsions mirror Anderson’s own. For the film, Anderson commissioned a series of bespoke items which make up this display alongside the seemingly mundane, yet requisite, cardboard boxes: a Cartier rosary, a pipe from Dunhill and a bejewlled dagger made by Harumi Klossowska de Rola.

The exhibition concludes with Asteroid City, a film staged as a play within a television programme within a film. Fittingly, the film reunites many of Anderson’s beloved ‘theatre troupe’ of actors amid a riot of mid-century props. Rows of vending machines dispense surreal offerings – Campbell’s soup, Southwestern real estate, ammunition, and martinis – inviting visitors to momentarily inhabit Anderson’s theatrical universe. 

Rounding out the journey through Anderson’s cinematic world is a screening room showcasing some of his most renowned short films: Bottle Rocket (1993), Hotel Chevalier (2007), Castello Cavalcanti (2013), and The Swan (2023). Here, viewers are invited to sit back and absorb the moving-image archive that they have just traversed – an affectionate tribute to one of contemporary cinema’s most distinctive voices. 

While meticulously curated, the show runs the risk of appearing gimmicky – although, I must admit, a gimmick I was willingly hoodwinked by. The interactive concierge booth is akin to a theme park photo op and the accompanying Canva popup featured in the museum entrance sets a rather commercialised tone, as Canva attempts to link Anderson’s artistry to the platform's ethos of empowering design for the masses – a seemingly touching sentiment that comes off more as a cheap marketing stunt. For devoted fans looking to dive deeper into Anderson’s lesser-known oeuvre or personal life itself, the exhibition also misses the mark, focusing on 12 of his more well-known works. However, if you are hoping for an intimate look at the detail and craftsmanship that comprises his signature style – and an admittedly fun exhibition – then you are sure to find what you are looking for.

The exhibition runs at the Design Museum until 26th July 2026. 

Madison previously won The Costume Society's Museum Work Experience grant; read about her experience following winning the award in 2024 here.