The V&A is markedly pulling audiences in with celebrity names this year. Following the opening of Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John & David Furnish Collection, the museum now highlights NAOMI: In Fashion, a major exhibition dedicated to one of the most prolific models of our time. This exhibition showcases over 100 items that trace Naomi Campbell's life through clothes, offering a visual history of fashion spanning her four-decade career.

Streatham-born Naomi’s life has been an open book with not much to hide and the public has seen the trajectory of her career, her personal ups and downs, hence for many this will be a nostalgic exhibition. It begins with small introduction to her life up until her discovery aged 15 while hanging out in Covent Garden after school. In a cabinet there is a display of her ballet shoes, a school photo, early images from her work on a Culture Club video I’ll Tumble for Ya (1983) and her early modelling career.

Her plan was never to be a model, but training as a dancer at London’s Italia Conti Academy of Theatre and Arts prepared her to not just wear the clothes but to truly bring them alive on the catwalk. An Iconic model was born with her trademark “walk”.

Most of the collection are her own, some generously given to her by the designers, some no longer with us. Enthusiasts of high-end designer fashion will not want to miss these key pieces:

• The car corset and Sequined Skirt from the Thierry Mugler “Drive like a Buick collection” of 1989, made from plastic, metal and acrylic.

• The 2019 Met Gala custom pink ensemble by Pierpaolo Piccioli for Valentino.

• Andy Warhol-print dress from Gianni Versace’s spring/summer 1991 show.

• The Dolce & Gabbana dress (2007) she wore when she finished her Community Service at the New York Sanitation department.

• A classic purple Chanel 2 piece.

• The 1993 “Super elevated Gillie” shoes in blue moc-croc with a 30.5 cm platform from which she stumbled at the Vivienne Westwood show are reunited here with the ensemble for the first time.

• Sarah Burton’s dress for Alexander McQueen which she wore when accepting The Fashion Icon Award at the British Fashion Council’s Fashion Awards.

Naomi has graced hundreds of covers and we are shown a curated selection throughout the exhibition. Her first Vogue cover (aged 17) was for British Vogue’s December edition in 1987, is shown alongside her personal photographs from the day.  Not many models are found on the cover of Time magazine, she was chosen as the face of the Supermodel phenomenon for the magazine in 1991. She also graced the cover of Vogue Italia’s 2008 “black issue”.

She remembers and credits many people for their support of her throughout the exhibition. “God bless Yves because he was a designer who really helped women of colour and he changed the course of my career” She first walked for him in 1987.  In 1988, Yves Saint Laurent threatened to pull his house’s advertising from French Vogue unless they shot Campbell for its cover.

An entire room is dedicated to Azzedine Alia, the late Tunis-born, Paris-based designer, a father figure whom she met at 16 and is a big part of her story. They met in Paris when Naomi joined a friend attending an appointment with Azzedine right after she had been thoroughly cleaned out by a pickpocket. She spoke no French, he spoke no English, but he managed to calm her, cook her dinner and with Naomi’s mum’s approval would continue to look out for her and live for a time with the designer, his partner, and their dogs. On display is a leopard-print knitwear bodysuit from Alaïa’s autumn/winter 1991 ready-to-wear collection, famously captured in a photograph by Herb Ritts in 1991 for Interview magazine.

Naomi met Nelson Mandela in 1994 and she credits him with teaching her to do things with dignity, integrity and inspiring her to use her platform for social change and in a re created dressing room filled with clothes rails, scattered magazines, and make up, is a copy of his “Long Walk to Freedom” book. She went on to organize a Versace fashion show in 1998 to benefit Nelson Mandela's Children's Fund.

She has indeed gone on to use her platform to increase catwalk diversity, from her involvement with the Black Girls coalition in the late 1980s to her campaigning work for The Diversity Coalition more recently launching the EMERGE intitiave in 2022 which focuses on the support of Alternative Education and investment in young creative and business talent from emerging regions with a focus in Africa, the Diaspora and developing communities around the world.

Before heading upstairs there is a video wall filled with friends, and fashion industry luminaries speaking of all Naomi’s facets as a person, as a model and as a philanthropist. And tucked next to it is also reference to her time doing community service for her phone throwing incident - the only part of the exhibit that dents her glowing persona.

On the upper floors there are double height showcases filled to the brim with her outfits. Humourously you’ll find her Covid airport Hazmat-suit look paired with a Burberry cape and a personal favourite from Alexander McQueen’s 2010 Plato’s Atlantis collection. The Reptile Patterned look with Armadillo Boots from the last collection before his death. Campbell modelled this look at a charity fashion show for aid survivors of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

This floor is surrounded by a montage of images and video on a circular screen filled with mesmerising images showing Naomi in all her glory which has been carefully curated by her close friend Edward Enninful, Vogue’s Global Creative and Cultural Advisor. Images of her magazine covers, in Playboy magazine, a leopard print clad Naomi racing an actual leopard, catwalk appearances – all of it succeeds in underpinning the force she has been in the industry. The display will also have you dancing to George Michael’s Freedom soundtrack.

Lastly, for a bit of fun there is an instructional video from Naomi explaining how to “WALK LIKE NAOMI” which is set up next to a mini catwalk with a bold multi-coloured back drop where you are encouraged to strut your stuff. After which your modelling moment is immediately played back on the big screens. There were some good attempts made on our visit but it is hard to compete with our Supermodel, London girl, Naomi.

Overall, the exhibition feels superficial and somehow lacks depth. Her persona and skill as a model are clear but the exhibition would have benefitted if we could have discovered more about the alchemy between designers, models and photographers. Only because I made the effort to purchase the accompanying book to the exhibition could I find more insightful information but there will certainly be many very happy to enjoy fawning over the outfits and accessories and viewing the images of accomplished fashion photographers.

Date: 22 June 2024 - 6 April 2025. Location: V&A South, Kensington, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL. Price: £18 /Under 30s £8 /Free for members. Book now. 

Words by Natascha Milsom