Delve into the dynamic world of creative territories happening around the world that are redefining our understanding of beauty, identity and creative expression.

Here are the best fashion exhibitions to visit now and in 2026: 

Marie Antoinette Style, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

20 September 2025 – 22 March 2026

Beautifully presented across the high-ceilinged, spacious galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the 18th-century French queen—a complex fashion icon—Marie Antoinette is having her moment. Known as the last queen of France before the French Revolution overthrew her husband, King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette was unpopular among the French people back in the day. Today, she’s shifting perspective and stirring your emotions with a beautiful exhibition titled Marie Antoinette Style. 

Sponsored by luxury footwear label, Manolo Blahnik, the exhibition tells the narrative of her style, youth and notoriety. With over 250 years of design, fashion, film and art, it has everything you would expect—shimmering jewels, beaded shoes, regal furnishings and beautiful 18th-century gowns. 

From John Galliano’s Marie Antoinette-inspired Dior couture pieces to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s custom Dior couture for the BBC’s Marie Antoinette and beaded slippers belonging to Marie Antoinette, the exhibition is a glimpse at the legacy she left behind. We even get to be immersed in a room brimming with embroideries, ruffles, exaggerated skirts and florals. Keeping the magical feeling alive, there are also rooms packed with Marie’s personal jewellery.  All of it being a pièce de résistance, the exhibition memorialises the queen’s legacy and history with thought, beauty and magic. 

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World, National Portrait Gallery, London

Gallery views of Cecil Beaton at the National Portrait Gallery.
Photo: © David Parry/ National Portrait Gallery

9 October 2025 – 11 January 2026

Reowned for his photographs that transformed the world of fashion, Cecil Beaton was an extraordinary force in the 20th-century British and American creative scenes. A true Renaissance man of his era, Beaton’s influence extended far beyond the camera lens—he was also an accomplished costume designer, diarist and set designer who won multiple Academy Awards for his work on films including Gigi and My Fair Lady. Today, you get to revisit his ground-breaking talent in an exhibition dedicated solely to his fashion and portrait photography.

From photographs, to letters, portraits sketches, fashion illustrations and costumes, the Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World exhibition has over 200 items displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Within the collection, you’ll even see iconic figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando—each captured through Beaton’s discerning eye that could transform his subjects into timeless icons.

For this exhibition, you can trace his evolution as an artist, observing how he masterfully adapted to changing fashions and cultural shifts while maintaining his signature style.

Westwood | Kawakubo, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

National Gallery of Victoria

7 December 2025 – 19 April 2026

Born a year apart, British designer Vivienne Westwood and Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons both brought radical, rule-breaking approaches to fashion that challenged conventions of taste, gender, and beauty. This year onwards, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne are pairing the works of two of the most influential fashion designers in recent history with a thematic exhibition. 

Featuring over 140 innovative designs, Westwood | Kawakubo explores convergences between these self-taught rebels through loans from international museums including the Met, V&A, and Palais Galliera, plus over 100 works from NGV’s collection—including nearly 40 pieces recently gifted by Comme des Garçons.

The exhibition spans their careers from the mid-1970s to the present, examining punk’s influence, historical reinterpretation, experimental methodologies and gender interrogation. Supplemented by archival materials, photography, and runway footage, highlights include Westwood’s iconic 1970s punk ensembles, her MacAndreas tartan gown worn by Kate Moss and the corseted wedding dress from Sex and the City: The Movie.

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art

1 March – 1 November 2026

Fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli was a provocateur who challenged conventional dress through witty, elegant and strikingly surreal designs that incorporate humour and surprise. Working within traditional tailoring while subverting it with extraordinary materials and Surrealist imagery—including collaborations with Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau—she created unique fashion statements that invite viewers to look again. This UK-first exhibition spans the 1920s to today, tracing the fashion house’s groundbreaking origins through pieces like her iconic black jumper knitted with a white bow, the ‘Tears’ dress and celebrating its evolution under current creative director Daniel Roseberry. The exhibition will comprise over 200 objects, including garments, accessories, jewellery, paintings, photographs, sculpture, furniture, perfumes and archive material—Schiaparelli’s most radical designs.

Costume Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

10 May 2026 – 10 January 2027

The Costume Institute’s spring 2026 exhibition will explore the centrality of the dressed body by pairing garments with artworks to illuminate the intrinsic relationship between clothing and the body. Concentrating on Western art from prehistory to the present, Costume Art creates dialogues between fashion pieces and objects from across the Museum’s departments, exploring connections ranging from formal to conceptual, aesthetic to political, individual to universal, illustrative to symbolic, and playful to profound. These pairings are arranged through thematic interpretations of the body that demonstrate their persistence across time and cultures.