A new exhibition about the life of British supermodel Naomi Campbell will take visitors through a “cornucopia” of artefacts from her 40-year career, according to its curator. Naomi In Fashion will launch at London’s V&A Museum on Saturday June 22 and is the first exhibition to focus solely on a single supermodel, telling Campbell’s story from her dancing beginnings to the height of her 1990s fame. Visitors begin at a pair of dancing shoes from her childhood career, when Campbell featured in music videos for the likes of Bob Marley and Culture Club from the age of just eight.
From there, the exhibition takes fans through the highs and lows of the south London-born supermodel’s 40 years in the spotlight. Classic outfits displayed include the Vivienne Westwood Super Elevated Gillie Shoes and Ensemble, which caused her to tumble on a Paris catwalk, and a glittering Dolce and Gabbana dress she wore on her last day of community service in New York after throwing her phone at an employee in 2007. Notably, many of the pieces on display come from Campbell’s own archive, according to V&A fashion curator Elisabeth Murray.
She told the PA news agency: “Lots of these pieces don’t exist anymore outside of individual archives so the fact she has kept them and then been able to layer on her stories has really lifted it. “It’s really a cornucopia of fashion from the last 40 years.” Ms Murray, says the famous Westwood platform shoes have been a part of the museum’s coll.