Dior to McQueen: Fashioning Form brings eight decades of pioneering fashion into dialogue with postwar and contemporary sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from May 15th to September 7th, 2027. Marking the museum’s first major fashion exhibition in 40 years, the show examines the creative affinities between fashion and sculpture, tracing how both disciplines have challenged conventional ideas of the human form through new materials, techniques and technologies.
Fashion takes on a sculptural life
Featuring works by 45 fashion designers and 15 sculptors, the exhibition spans 1947 to today, bringing together Christian Dior, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake, Alexander McQueen, Iris van Herpen and Daniel Roseberry for Schiaparelli alongside Louise Bourgeois, John Chamberlain, Lygia Clark, Henry Moore and Cornelia Parker.
The exhibition opens with Christian Dior’s iconic Bar suit from 1947, shown alongside Louise Bourgeois’ Persistent Antagonism from her Personnages series. Dior’s sharply cinched white silk jacket and dramatically pleated black skirt defined the sculptural hourglass silhouette of the New Look, while Bourgeois reduced the human figure to an elongated painted-wood form balanced on a narrow point. The pairing reveals two radically different approaches to reshaping the body in the aftermath of World War II.
Another section explores folding, pleating and compression, pairing John Chamberlain’s Fenellosa’s Column (1983), a monumental sculpture of crushed and folded chromium-plated steel, with garments that manipulate fabric through extreme draping and pleating. Madame Grès’ finely micro-pleated gowns and Adrian’s metallic gray dress appear alongside Glenn Martens’ 2025 Margiela Artisanal look, featuring a crushed metal mask and compressed plastic sheeting.
The exhibition also explores stretch, elasticity, kinetic elements and interactive technologies, showing how designers and sculptors push materials beyond their expected limits. From postwar experimentation to contemporary wearable technologies responding to movement and environment, Dior to McQueen: Fashioning Form positions fashion and sculpture as parallel disciplines, continually reshaping the body, its surroundings and the possibilities of form.
