Martin Grant, National Gallery of Victoria

1 September 2025, by Dolla Merrillees

In this week’s blog post, curator and Costume Society member Dolla Merrillees reviews the Martin Grant exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne.

Fashion designer Martin Grant may not be a household name in Australia, although some will recall Meghan Markle wearing his striped maxi sundress and trench coat in Sydney during the 2018 royal tour, yet this has not prevented his hometown of Melbourne from hosting a major retrospective of his work. Curated by Katie Somerville and developed in close collaboration with the France-based designer, the exhibition offers a comprehensive exploration of his 30-plus year career, his creative processes, and contribution as a leading, if understated, figure in contemporary fashion.

Conceived in part as an opportunity to foreground a designer whose contribution to fashion has been under-recognised and long overdue for critical attention, the exhibition curator Somerville notes, this  “was a real opportunity to introduce his work to those who may not be aware of his designs and to share his  fascinating creative story from Blackburn born and raised childhood, teen design success, Art school sculptor, to quietly establishing in Paris and becoming the favoured  designer of many leading fashion, film and journalism industry figures.”

Melbourne-born Grant has enjoyed a long association with Victoria’s flagship state gallery. According to Somerville, the NGV has been acquiring his work since the late 1990s and, in 2005-06, presented an exhibition dedicated to his practice, Martin Grant Paris. The gallery’s holdings were further enriched in 2023 by a substantial gift from his personal archives, including a selection of key pieces dating back to the early 1990s when Grant established his eponymous label in Paris.  The resulting exhibition brings together a selection of these acquisitions alongside loans from the designer’s own archives and private collections, complemented by drawings, photographs, artwork, press material and catwalk recordings.

More than 200 pieces are on display, and together with the refined exhibition palette and scenography developed by the gallery’s in-house team epitomise Grant’s sensibility and aesthetic—what the late André Leon Tally described as “precise, sharp and full of grace”. This precision, sophistication, and sustained exploration of form and line that has defined his practice across over three decades is fluidly expressed in the exhibition’s layout and thematic structure, where the boundary between the garment and installation dissolves to create an almost seamless, immersive experience for the viewer.

As Somerville observes, “Grant has a highly developed and signature approach to working in three dimensions, be it on the body, arrangements of objects in his studio interiors or in art installation/sculptural form and it made perfect sense to incorporate this into the visitor experience of his work in the gallery space as well.”

The exhibition is not arranged chronologically but instead organised thematically, a deliberate choice by Grant to invite visitors to experience it as an extension of his creative practice. The opening room reflects Grant’s early life in Melbourne, featuring a series of kindergarten paintings of ballgowns that reveal his early fascination with dressing up and fashion, alongside references to his sculptural practice, atelier life, and key collaborations that have been an integral part of his practice, including photographer Sally Borland, artists Jenny Watson and Rosslynd Piggott, shoe designer Christian Louboutin, and milliner Tamasine Dale. It also includes an audio soundtrack curated by the gallery’s multimedia department in collaboration with Grant featuring 1980s punk, pop and rock music, echoing his early musical influences and his enduring habit of working to music in the studio.

The second section draws visitors into the world of the runway and the showroom, where the importance of the silhouette comes to the fore. The third room offers a deeper encounter with a series of key collections and features runway footage that traces Grant’s evolution across his career. The final space heightens the sense of drama and theatricality of his evening wear, staged in a low-lit environment where dramatic lighting isolates the sculptural presentation of the garments, making them appear suspended as if floating in space. It serves as a powerful finale to the exhibition, where the childhood ballgown drawings that open the show find their ultimate expression.

Throughout the exhibition, Grant’s precise tailoring and meticulous craftsmanship are foregrounded, together with his refined pared-back aesthetic, which he defines as “the essential of everything”. His use of classic fabrics—such as felted wool and silk satin—and a restrained colour palette underscore a design philosophy grounded in elegance, in what he describes as a “minimalistic, purer, structural form”. On display are signature pieces of outerwear including trench coats, peacoats, and tailored jackets such as the Napoleon II coat (2000-2001), Look 15 coat (2003) and the crinoline Couture Coat (2021), often referred to as the Mary Poppins coat. Other highlights include capes, gowns and jumpsuits, among them the red wool Joan of Arc dress (1999-2000), worn by both Naomi Campbell and Cate Blanchett, and Look 28, a metallic velvet evening dress (2007) whose surface shimmers like liquid mercury.
 

The exhibition, on view until 26 January 2026, offers an intimate encounter with Grant, who feels strikingly present throughout the space, situating him not only as a designer of clothes but as an artist attuned to form, material and atmosphere. Where the exhibition is less well served is in its accompanying catalogue, which reads more like —perhaps intentionally—a look book than a critical publication. While Somerville’s essay on Grant’s career and background is insightful, it would have benefitted from the inclusion of a comprehensive list of exhibition works, an outline of the exhibition’s thematic structure, and an essay situating Grant among his peers in Australia such as Kara Baker, Christopher Graf and Fiona Scanlan.

Given that the exhibition is set in Melbourne and seeks to introduce Grant to Australian audiences, it feels like a missed opportunity not to engage more fully with the city’s cultural contexts—particularly the interplay of fashion, art, and music during this period, vividly evoked in the flyer for the Fashion Design Council’s 1988 parade Fashion Babylon in Melbourne, which proclaimed: “Brazen hussies, glamour pusses, spivs and bright sparks; rising stars, mischief-makers and the phenomenal dreams of groovy fashion designers implode onto the catwalk.” Such a text, in tandem with the exhibition, might have further highlighted this dynamism in relation to the evolution of Grant’s practice.

Nevertheless, the exhibition and the donation to the NGV make it clear that, although Grant has called France home for the past 30 years, Melbourne has also left a lasting imprint on him.

Dolla recently visited the Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses review in Brisbane; catch up on the review on our blog.