“It wasn’t about me. It was about the clothes.” That’s a statement from Naomi Campbell, which—in light of the subject of the V&A’s latest fashion exhibition—doesn’t exactly follow through. In recent years, the South Kensington museum has enjoyed record-breaking success with retrospectives dedicated to legendary designers (see 2023/2024’s “Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto” and 2019’s “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams”), but never before has it dedicated an exhibition to a single model, one whose teenage success was so meteoric—and whose image-making is so iconic—she’s referred to by her first name only.
“Naomi: In Fashion” chronicles the astonishing 40-year career of the Streatham-born catwalk star, who spent her early years grooving in music videos for Bob Marley and Culture Club before being spotted in Covent Garden in 1985 at age 15 by the model agent Beth Boldt. Since her first cover shoot in 1987 (the photographer, Patrick Demarchelier; the fashion, exquisitely embellished gold and turquoise Chanel Haute Couture designed by Karl Lagerfeld), Campbell has gone on to grace the cover of Vogue US and British Vogue several times. In August 1988, she was the first Black woman to be shot for the cover of Vogue France; she represented the stratospheric era of the supermodel on the 1991 cover of Time (complete with the cover line “Beauty and the Bucks”), and in 1997 became the first Black model to open a Prada show.
“I can’t imagine debuting my retrospective anywhere else but London—this is where I was born, raised, and discovered—but it is, I’ll admit, more than a little nerve-wracking to think of it as a homecoming,” Campbell wrote in the March 2024 issue of British Vogue.
“It’s hard to think of any other model that warrants their own dedicated museum exhibition,” says Sonnet Stanfill, senior curator, fashion, at the V&A, at a preview of the exhibition, where we are greeted in the ground-floor gallery by a joyful montage of Campbell’s catwalk appearances. Bringing together pieces from the supermodel’s own extensive fashion archive, personal ephemera (including one of her first Concorde tickets, and her profile pages in Elite’s 1997 model directory book), and photography spanning decades, Stanfill has created a multi-sensory sojourn through the milestones of a singular career—one that has seen Campbell form longstanding collaborative relationships with designers including Azzedine Alaïa, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Karl Lagerfeld, photographers from Steven Meisel to Peter Lindbergh, and evolve after a certain George Michael music video from a supermodel with a capital “S” into a social activist and philanthropist, who bonded with Nelson Mandela and founded the Black Girls Coalition in 1989, alongside Bethann Hardison and Iman. As Campbell previously told Vogue: “To stand in front of my wardrobe is a humbling experience; vivid memories replay bygone conversations with the legendary designers who were among my closest friends and collaborators.”
The build-up to the opening of “Naomi: In Fashion” has sparked some lively debate at British Vogue HQ about Campbell’s most iconic fashion looks. Favorites include the feathered Vivienne Westwood ensemble Campbell tumbled to the floor in at the British designer’s fall 1993 show (not because of her vertiginous purple platforms, but because her latex tights were sticking to her legs); the silver sequined Dolce & Gabbana demi-couture gown the model wore to complete her last day of community service at the District 3 Sanitation Garage in New York in 2007; the spring 1991 Versace gown emblazoned with Andy Warhol screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean’s faces; and the slashed knit Alaïa dresses that showed off not only the King of Cling’s technical mastery, but also Campbell’s astonishing physique.
All of these looks feature in the show (an entire room is dedicated to Alaïa, the designer Campbell referred to affectionately as “Papa”), alongside a range of pieces by John Galliano for Christian Dior, Marc Jacobs for Perry Ellis, Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, and Yohji Yamamoto. Then there are pieces by designers the super has personally supported and championed, including South African wunderkind Thebe Magugu and Lagos-born Kenneth Ize. “Naomi is always looking outward to support emerging creatives,” says Stanfill. “If she walks in your show, she’s supercharging your business.”
The exhibition also includes a selection of historic editorial imagery, from British Vogue magazine covers (including Naomi and her first child shot by Steven Meisel for the March 2022 issue) to global photoshoots, projected on a zoetrope around the show’s second floor. These photographs have been curated by Campbell’s close friend Edward Enninful, Vogue’s global creative and cultural advisor, who in the exhibition’s accompanying monograph refers to Naomi as “quite simply a model without compare.”
There’s also a striking sense of humor to the show, which draws attention not only to Campbell’s brushes with the law, but also her famous obsession with hygiene. In a vitrine that recreates one of her dressing rooms—complete with colorful paintings by Campbell’s two children and a pair of sparkling Christian Louboutin stilettos—a packet of Dettol wipes nods to her obsession with cleanliness. Upstairs, alongside monogrammed leather pieces by Louis Vuitton, a mannequin wears a hazmat suit paired with a tan Burberry poncho.
“Ultimately, with ‘Naomi,’ I hope you will get to know the love stories behind the clothes,” Campbell has said of the deeply personal exhibition. But considering how, in 1988, Yves Saint Laurent threatened to pull his house’s advertising from French Vogue unless they shot Campbell for its cover, or how Christy Turlington would turn down modeling jobs unless her then roommate was hired too, or how Jean Paul Gaultier would design his collections with Naomi’s specific grace of movement in mind, it’s clear it wasn’t always just about the clothes. It was about the woman wearing them.
“Naomi: In Fashion” is at the V&A from June 22, 2024, until April 6, 2025