V&A says Dior exhibition beats Savage Beauty as museum's most visited

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Sep 3, 2019

The V&A’s ‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’ showcase has become the museum’s most visited exhibition ever, surpassing the former record set by ‘Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’ in 2015.

594,994 tickets were sold for ‘Designer of Dreams’ over seven months - this is over 100,000 more than for ‘Savage Beauty’, the museum revealed on Tuesday.

Billed as the most comprehensive exhibition ever staged in the UK on the House of Dior, ‘Designer of Dreams’ had over 200 rare haute couture garments on display alongside fashion accessories, vintage perfumes, original make-up, photographs, illustrations, magazines and some of Christian Dior’s personal possessions.

The show was so popular that tickets for the entire run sold out in three weeks after opening, which led to the museum extending the exhibition by seven weeks. Supported by Swarovski, the Dior exhibition finally closed its doors to the public on 1 September.

Tristram Hunt, director of the V&A, said: “In 1947 Christian Dior changed the face of fashion, creating a lasting legacy that continues to inspire today. The V&A has a history of staging revelatory fashion exhibitions, so we knew that Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams would be popular, but we have been overwhelmed by the phenomenal visitor response since it opened in February. I would like to thank all our visitors who have gone to such great lengths to experience this extraordinary show.”

Over the past few years, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London has been hosting larger-scale fashion exhibition as public interest in high fashion has continued to rise. In addition to the 2015 McQueen showcase it staged a retrospective on Cristobal Balenciaga in 2017 and last year it opened ‘Fashioned From Nature’ with pieces from Stella McCartney, Calvin Klein and Christian Louboutin.