Leonie Bell

Catwalk: the Art of the Fashion Show is open! We are so happy with responses from visitors over its first few days. We love it! ❤️ The exhibition is an invitation to go behind the scenes to the energy of the backstage and through 125 years of iconic front rows & runways. It celebrates the magic & myths of fashion shows & places them in a wider cultural, economic, historic & social context. The exhibition reflects on the ways that culture, society & technology shape & are shaped by the catwalk. Fashion shows offer escapism & theatre, often fantastical, powerful statements about the times they are made in. At the same time they can be exclusive & elite, presenting narrow visions of age, beauty, bodies & society. The exhibition celebrates designers including the innovators & disrupters who seek change & it sets out how fashion reflects & resists the world around it. It also tells a Scottish story - as a place of experimentation & tradition with evocative landscapes, rich histories, diverse subcultures & deep craft & textile traditions. From Paris’ intimate salons to Scotland’s first fashion show in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow 1938 as part of its Empire exhibition, through the 1960s & 1990s to the spectacles that travel to our phones at supersonic speed today. It’s a tribute to the visionary designers, the many creative people & design skills who work in synch to create catwalks, alongside magazines, journalism, shops, photography, models, hair & make up, photography, illustrators, stylists, creators & wearers who extend fashion way beyond the runway. Catwalk is developed by @vadundee with @vitradesignmuseum . Brilliantly curated by kirstoir @s.panova @jochen_eisenbrand @katharina_krawczyk ❤️ Designed by @nomadexhibitions at V&A Dundee & originally designed by @ania_martchenko & @haller_brun It looks so good 🌟 So many people to thank from lenders & contributors to many colleagues & technicians but a wee special mention to @carolinegrewar @char__hale @jenniepatter @tarawright2230 @luhendry_ @samanthapaton___ & their teams who spun so much magic together All good pics by always brilliant @grantandersondotme

Opening Catwalk: the Art of the Fashion Show! A day full of legends filled with the most amazing collaborators, colleagues, partners & friends. A night of dressing up, getting together, celebrating fashion with the best of Scottish hospitality, dancing in the museum & even having a going home outfit 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Thank you to everyone who came out in the rain, got dolled up & made it a magical night. Huge thanks to our own Scottish Queen of the catwalk campaign @lucifer_fearfull @too_gallus @modelteamscotland and to @gareth_valentino @anacruzmakeup @ochayekinoo for all the help with the day to night glam. To @try_nlsn for the further styling 🥰. To our partners @vitradesignmuseum And to @katielaudraws for illustrating the night and @misslydiaphoto @grantandersondotme for the pics And to my three daughters for the Cher dance ❤️

Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine is open & free for all. Its focus is Tatreez, elaborate hand-embroidery found on Palestinian dress & fashion. An ancient tradition recognised by the UN as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It’s also alive, a visual highly symbolic language. The exhibition also celebrates the bonds from 45 years of Dundee’s twin city relationship with Nablus.    The opening night speeches from @amershomali @antoniamcarver @nadiaelnakla marked it as a hugely meaningful moment, full of dignity & love.   At this time of immense grief in Gaza & Palestine, the exhibition seeks to celebrate the joy, creativity, hope & resilience of the Palestinian people.  We are honoured to have been able to bring this @art_jameel exhibition to life in Dundee. We thank our partners & all the designers, artists & lenders who have contributed to the exhibition for entrusting us to tell these precious & vital stories from Palestine’s past & present.   Enormous gratitude to @racheldedman from whom so much of this grows.     It is an exhibition that is full of humanity & life. It is harrowing & full of hope. It displays fashion, jewellery, posters & family photos stretching back to the late 19th century. Palestinian women & their knowledge, skills & experiences are the beating heart of the exhibition. It’s an exhibition of their stories, of the relationship between matrilineal memory, making, stitching and of family moments.     It’s a fashion exhibition. It positions fashion as fundamental & ornamental. The extreme skill & ambition of the cross stitch & couching would be at home in couture & on the catwalk. The time, the labour, the love given to each item asks us to slow down, spend time with them, to read their stories.     The items are drawn from the collections of @palmuseum @vamuseum Displayed too are the ideas of contemporary designers, artists & thobe wearers reflecting the innovation, interpretation and meaning found in tatreez today.      Thread Memory shows the ways embroidery & fashion has shaped Palestinian identity over the 20th & 21st centuries into a form of resistance & expression of solidarity.   #ThreadMemory #Tatreez #VADundee

Got lucky in Glasgow and managed to catch the end of Simon Phipps - Brutal Scotland: Scotland’s Post-War Modernist Architecture @streetlevelphotoworks Felt a like I was walking through a massive magazine of sometimes bruised sometimes bruising beautiful brutalism. Each page so evocative of its time, ideas, place and of hope in the future. Lovely touches with actual magazine pages and song lyrics. So interesting to feel the love for the buildings that emanated through the exhibition at a time when there are so many conversations about Glasgow. Its architecture, its art, its at times aching heart. Still nowhere like it ❤️ Massive congrats @new_brutalism @streetlevelphotoworks @this.malcolmdickson loved it

Breaking news! 📢 We are so excited to announce the UK debut of Vivienne Westwood & Jewellery at V&A Dundee. Opening March 2027, discover the fascinating story of how jewellery has played an integral role in defining the Vivienne Westwood look. The exhibition offers an immersive look at four decades of special archive and runway jewellery displayed together as a collection for the first time. Curated by the house of @viviennewestwood and produced with @nomadexhibitions , this immersive exhibition explores the design language and subversive spirit of the British design house through the prism of jewellery. Sign up to our newsletter to get all the latest news and be the first to find out when tickets go on sale. Link in bio. Image credits: 1. Photograph by Jo Metson Scott 2 - 4. Photograph by Philippe Lacombe

Oh May Days! 🥰 with some late April creeping in. Fife’s Kellie Castle as pretty as ever & a glorious Friday night fashion show in Glasgow’s beautiful @theburrellcollection with the brilliant @flora_mcfarlane_ And….lots of love for @nigel.dunnett & his @hospitalfield planting that’s so strong & lives on ❤️

Whisky is on lots of folks minds today, last week I whizzed up to see the beautifully reimagined @thedalmore distillery to chair a conversation on design, on ideas of modern Scotland that are rooted in innovation, heritage & tradition, whisky (of course), the distillery as a site of work, production with ties to people, land & water and now as a visitor experience. The distillery has been perfectly positioned by the Cromarty Firth for 180 years. It’s been brilliantly redesigned by @threesixtyarch - old stone feels like it will hold the buildings forever and new interventions put you in the middle of the whisky making process, where all the skills of the process are celebrated along with Scotland’s whisky culture. The still room is gorgeous and the copper stills are magical creatures, new glass designed by John Clark creates a cathedral like atmosphere. The bright red ranunculus flowers by @wildgorse were glorious, the whisky & weather wonderful and the company was so fine. Looking at you @cokhio & @osmancanyerebakan @laurainwonderland__ Thank you for having me @thedalmore 🥃❤️🥃

A slightly wild vase of April’s garden flowers to mark what would have been my younger sister Corinne’s 46th birthday. Every year since she died in 2001 I pick dandelions for her, & now for my mum too. I picked a bunch of dandelions from the grassy car park verges as my dad took me to meet my sister for the first time in April 1980 at Ninewells still new modernist hospital. The photos we have of her are few compared to now, and are fading. I love the one of us with our older brother, Ruthven. I can still hear her voice & laugh, just. I still remember dancing to Ray of Light with her as we flew through a Glasgow night 💖 We went to the opening of @florence_peake ‘s Your Meaning Not Your Materiality (YMNYM) @hospitalfield this afternoon. And the way Florence spoke about her work, grief & loss hit home & to the heart. Talking of how normal day to day objects become intangibly changed & charged shapes that we live with instead of the person, memorials to hold onto that get mixed with memory. Florence’s sculptures create something tangible from the black hole of absence, from the in-between. Florence’s words were personal but created a common gathering & understanding at Hospitalfield today with so many drawing together from what she said. Thank you @florence_peake 🤍🕊️

Galavanting around Gala and celebrating a major and minor father/son birthday in the Borders 🐏 as always thanks for the hats @skye_graphicdesign So good to see the Gala Fairydean stadium’s spectacular concrete radiant under Gala’s April skies🥰 And @robertsmailsprintingworks is such a gem 💎 Sad but good to see the Dundee tapestry panel my Mum worked on with her embroidery gang on the 4th anniversary of her going to soon xx And such a treat to see dear people in such special places ❤️ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 ❤️

Newcastle, you absolute beauty! Along with Gateshead & Tynemouth 🥰 A much needed 28 hours with dear friends after an incredible week or two. Zipping around the baltic north east, baking in a sauna, freezing in the sea, stumbling into an amazing railway market (that doll & its outfit!) admiring this gorgeous city & great to see Baltic so alive x

Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine, closes @vadundee on Sunday 26 April 2026. Since the exhibition opened last June over 120,000 people have visited. Many staying for hours, many returning, many sharing how moved they are by its stories, its beauty, its acts of remembrance, resistance & its depth & range. We have grown through the process of developing it for Dundee with @hayyjameel @palmuseum @vamuseum We have learnt so much from Thread Memory & we are so grateful to have been trusted to share & care for these stories during these harrowing times of immeasurable grief. The exhibition opened with words of huge sadness & dignity. We hope, the exhibition shares stories of hope, humanity, love & joy expressed through the practices & clothing of women & girls. The power of matrilineal memory, of making, stitching, of fashion & of family are the ❤️ of the exhibition. It’s full of history & it looks to Palestine’s future through contemporary loans from artists, designers and tatreez wearers, stewards & interpreters. We will close Thread Memory with a symposium that booked up fast. Featuring international speakers & experts who will unfold the stories behind the exhibition, share new research as well as look to the responsibilities of caring for Palestinian objects & stories. Panels & presentations will also explore Palestine’s influence on Scottish & UK design, textile activism, dyeing practices & contemporary fashion. If you haven’t seen the exhibition, know that a warm welcome awaits everyone, do come & spend time within it. These pics are a small selection showing some of the moments that Thread Memory has created, a heartful thank you to everyone who has visited, contributed, supported, & helped us to care for & share this exhibition. The exhibition is possible because of so many people but especially, @racheldedman @antoniamcarver @amershomali @leenanammari @nadiaelnakla @kirstoir @miriammallalieu @iamayahaidar @faissalelmalak @ayham_hassan_99 @zeidhijazi @pieute @hazarjawabra @tatreezandtea @humzayousaf Photography @grantandersondotme @try_nlsn

Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show opens this week! 😍 A UK exclusive to V&A Dundee, this exhibition charts the dramatic evolution of the catwalk, from the private salons of the late 19th century to today’s immersive, live-streamed runway experiences. Tickets on sale, Members and kids go free. This exhibition is by V&A Dundee and @vitradesignmuseum . A huge thanks to our partner @louisvuitton and Model Partner @modelteamscotland . #VADCatwalk #Catwalk