Kunstmuseum Den Haag opened the autumn season with an impressive fashion blockbuster Global Wardrobe – The Worldwide Fashion Connection. Not only does it zoom in on fashion as a global phenomenon, but also on cultural appropriation in the fashion world. The exhibition covers the museum’s Western European fashion collection and the extra-European influences that played a role here. Once you step into the exhibition you will discover it is set up in a chronological manner, in three phases. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the twentieth century, and the present. “They represent the phases of imitation, inspiration and innovation. A deliberate choice was made to treat this theme not by region but in time periods. This reveals how the dominant views of ’the global fashion connection’ are constantly changing and can be placed in a historical context.”

The museum invites you to delve into their repository to soon discover common threads with other cultures all over the world. Hand-painted cotton from India, soft Chinese silk, imaginative batik designs from Indonesia and colourful variations on the Japanese kimono: each of these garments represents the world, and tells a story of inspiration and connection. Lovely but also painful stories, for many of these textiles were made during the age of colonialism and unequal power relations. This exhibition comes at a time when ideas about fashion as a global phenomenon and about cultural appropriation in the fashion world are in the spotlight. Kunstmuseum Den Haag will invite visitors to look beyond the splendour and see clothes as part of the world history they represent. Special attention will be focused on makers who design with an open view of the world, bringing their own cultural background to the fore.