An acclaimed fashion retrospective of designs by legendary British designer Vivienne Westwood will go on display in Hong Kong in December after being delayed for three years because the government rejected it as inappropriate to local tastes.
After opening at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London in 2004, A Life in Fashion went on show over the next three years in Shanghai, Taipei, Bangkok, Tokyo, Canberra and cities in the United States.
It features more than 140 designs and 70 objects selected from V&A's collection and Westwood's archives.
Hong Kong could have been the first stop on the exhibition's tour after London, because the museum pitched the idea to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department in 2005. But the exhibition was rejected.
'We did not think Vivienne Westwood and the other proposals appealed to the taste of Hong Kong people,' a government spokesman told the South China Morning Post in 2005. The comment drew severe criticism.
A V&A spokesman said that in 2005, the museum discussed the exhibition with various institutions in Hong Kong because it was travelling to Shanghai and Taipei in the same year, and a stopover in Hong Kong would have been convenient.
Swire Island East has now succeeded in securing the exhibition for Hong Kong.