Fashion is perhaps the form of industrial design most capable of speaking directly to emotion. Fashion shows, though they rarely last more than a few minutes, are meticulously conceived events – from the invitation to the soundtrack – designed to convey layered meanings. They merge the roles of social ritual, media performance, and aesthetic statement into a single gesture. A total work of art – to borrow Wagner’s notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk – in which architecture, scenography, sound, choreography, and objects combine to construct a unified experience. With Catwalk. The Art of the Fashion Show (10/18/2025 – 02/15/2026), the Vitra Design Museum offers a far-reaching examination of the fashion show as a language, from its early twentieth-century origins to the present.
1. The early Twentieth Century: the origins of the fashion show
The opening room presents photographs, film clips, and archival materials that document the birth of the fashion show as a form of presentation. From the salons of Charles Frederick Worth and Paul Poiret to makeshift runways in American department stores or on transatlantic liners, fashion begins to leave its private domain. Among the highlights are the mannequins from Théâtre de la Mode – the travelling exhibition organised in 1945 to revive French couture after the war – and original film footage of Balenciaga shows from the 1960s
2. Prêt-à-porter and the city
The second section traces the transformation of the fashion show into an urban phenomenon. In the 1950s and 1960s, as prêt-à-porter spreads, fashion aligns itself with subcultures and the tempo of metropolitan life. Courrèges and Paco Rabanne experiment with materials and movement, while Kenzo turns the runway into a celebration. The Battle of Versailles in 1973 marks a decisive moment: the rise of American fashion and the emergence of a new collective imagination. Black models, including Pat Cleveland, redefine the very idea of elegance.
3. The fashion show as media event
By the 1990s, the fashion show becomes a global stage. Backed by powerful industrial groups, fashion houses invest in productions of theatrical scale. For Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld transforms the Grand Palais into a supermarket, a rocket launch, a city boulevard. At the same time, designers such as Alexander McQueen, Martin Margiela, and Viktor & Rolf pursue opposite paths: industrial robots painting a dress in real time, performances in derelict spaces, bodies layered in ritual sequence. The fashion show becomes a laboratory for form and reflection – on the body, on spectacle, on consumption itself.
4. The fashion show in the hyperconnected era
The final room turns to the present, when the fashion show moves fluidly between physical and virtual realms. The 2020 pandemic accelerates experimentation with digital formats: Dior presents a miniature collection within a dollhouse, Loewe sends a Show in a Box, Balenciaga enters the world of The Simpsons. Simultaneously, the runway takes on political and social meaning: Rick Owens has women literally carry other women, Alessandro Michele (for Gucci) invokes Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, and Balenciaga questions ideals of beauty through facial prosthetics. The long-standing collaboration between Prada and Rem Koolhaas’s OMA studio exemplifies the deep connection between fashion and architecture.
Despite the speed and reach of digital communication, the exhibition underscores how the fashion show retains its power as a direct, embodied experience – a moment in which image and presence coincide, and the human body once again becomes the centre of a shared narrative.
