The last day for seeing the NGV retrospective of Paris-based Australian designer Martin Grant is 26 January 2026!
If you love fashion and live or are travelling to Melbourne soon, Martin Grant Paris is a must-see!
It’s the first major full career retrospective exhibition of the designer with close to 100 works drawn from the NGV Collection, alongside more than 40 loans from Grant’s own personal archive and private collections.
Grant is best known for his for his contemporary reinterpretations of wardrobe classics, including impeccably tailored suiting, exquisitely draped gowns and dramatic capes and jumpsuits.
Martin Grant spring -summer 2017 dress and petticoat. Photography Takashi Osato. Model: Renata Scheffe.
Main image: Martin Grant inside the Martin Grant exhibition at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia.
Photography Polly Borland.
The late Andre Leon Talley (former editor-at-large of US Vogue) famously described his aesthetic as “precise, sharp and full of grace” – garments with a “couture vocabulary.
Years ago when I interviewed Grant for MiNDFOOD magazine he shared a mid-90s career defining moment with Talley.
Talley had loved the collection so much that he attended the second showing, bringing with him Naomi Campbell as a surprise.
“He told me to keep two outfits aside. She came in, put them on and walked straight out onto the shop floor,” said Grant. The next morning there was a note from Barneys, New York, who bought the whole collection. He was also invited to join Barney’s New York as Artistic Director of the Barney’s Private Label, a tenure he held for 10-years.
Martin Grant spring–summer 2014. Photography Takashi Osato
Grant’s design process always begins with selection of fabric, which is draped and sculpted over the mannequin, with key designs revisited and refined over subsequent collections. He calls it “an evolution”.
Grant was born in 1966 and began sewing as a child with his grandmother. Early in his career in Melbourne he unwittingly created a new trend when he presented a collarless collection of shirts, dresses and jackets. The collarless designs were talked up as a new look, but he admitted his reason for leaving off the collars was because he didn’t how how to make them.
Designer Martin Grant gifted the NGV more than 200 works from his own personal archive in 2024. He is pictured here at the exhibition. Photography Sean Fennessy
He’s been Paris-based since 1992 and the exhibition surveys his illustrious four-decade career from the mid-1980s to the present day. Over that time he’s dressed Cate Blanchett, Lee Radziwill, Naomi Campbell, Lady Gaga, Juliette Binoche, Tilda Swinton, Blake Lively, Emma Stone, Eva Longoria, Rebel Wilson, Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser of Qatar and Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan.
Martin Grant Paris is on at the NGV, Melbourne until 26 January 2026.
