I should be so lucky/Lucky lucky lucky

This isn't about comics. Comics post tonight. In the meantime...

Remember what I said about how much I love London's Victoria & Albert Museum as one of my favorites in the world, not merely for the cavernous Raphael Cartoons room but also for their amazing collection of fashion designs?

Well, to steal a line from Spurge, if I were in London (and oh how I wish I were), I would go to this:

Focusing on the evolving image of Kylie Minogue, this exhibition features performance costumes, accessories, album covers and photographs, set against a backdrop of music and video. The exhibition shows Kylie's continually changing image, from 1988 onwards, starting with the overalls she wore as Charlene in Neighbours. It also includes the infamous gold lamé hotpants worn in the video for "Spinning Around" and the white hooded jumpsuit featured in the "Can't Get You Out of My Head" video.

This morning on the BBC Breakfast Takeaway podcast, they discussed whether or not Kylie's fashions were an appropriate exhibition for the staid V&A. This little bull says, bloody heck, yes! The Victoria and Albert has always been England's national museum of art and design, and that definition doesn't end at 1945 or 1961 or 1979. The V&A is in the middle of a major reconstruction and transformation to its layout and galleries that will open up the spaces much more fully (including many gallery areas that have been closed for decades), and one of its purposes is to cement the definition of England as a modern European nation and the V&A as central to its design sensibilities. From the V&A website:

One of the fundamental principles of the plan is to re-order the Museum by thinking of it as a city with a series of quarters. There will be two major cultural quarters, Asia and Europe. Asia brings together the V&A's unrivalled collections of Indian, South-East Asian, Islamic and Far Eastern art. Europe includes the already completed British Galleries as well as the new galleries of Medieval and Renaissance art. In these new presentations of the collections, breaking with traditional museum display, different types of object will be grouped together to evoke the culture of their particular time and place.

And what better way to evoke a culture than Kylie's shiny gold hotpants!:


The exhibition only runs through 10 June 2007, so sadly I won't be able to get to London during the show. But, if like me, you're stuck in a Kylie-less world, you can at least design Kylie's next fabulous fashion look at the Kylie Paper Doll Webpage!

Oh sure. I can hear the giggles. You people don't make fun of Kevin Church when he gushes about Pet Shop Boys, do you? Hmmph.