Your first look at fall wouldn’t be complete without a preview into the cultural happenings that are poised to excite. From global exhibitions to special collaborations, prepare to usher in the season ahead with a jolt of artistic splendor.

DAVID BAILEY’S CHANGING FASHION EXHIBITION TRAVELS TO A CORUÑA, SPAIN WITH THE MARTA ORTEGA PEREZ FOUNDATION

Since its opening nearly four years ago, the Marta Ortega Perez Foundation has consistently honored photography greats, with the works of Peter Lindbergh, Helmut Newton, and Steven Meisel gracing its vast walls. For its latest installment, British fashion photographer David Bailey takes center stage, decidedly right where he belongs. Known for his arresting black-and-white portraits, Bailey helped define the creative revolution that drove the Swinging Sixties, instinctually turning his lens to chronicle the cultural vanguard of the time.

Changing Fashion, which opens with a sequence of luminous portraits lensing English model and actress Jean Shrimpton, immerses visitors in the glamor and grit of ‘60s and ‘70s London. At the heart of the narrative lies David Bailey’s box of pin-ups, the photographer’s legendary 1965 portfolio of London’s beloved glitterati. Featuring 36 of the city’s most infamous stars—Mick Jagger (duh), ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, a youthful Michael Caine, Cecil Beaton, and, controversially at the time, gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray—the album immortalises a time as garishly dazzling as it was privily dangerous. Displayed among cabinets of curiosity brimming with ephemera from Bailey’s studio life, the exhibition captures Bailey’s raw, unfiltered energy. Vogue legend Diana Vreeland once quipped, “Irving Penn’s studio is like a cathedral; David Bailey’s studio is like a nightclub.” And V thinks this show feels like a velvet-rope invite.

David Bailey’s Changing Fashion is on display at The MOP Foundation exhibition space in Galicia, Spain

THE WORLD OF ANNA SUI EXHIBITION MAKES AN ELECTRIFYING U.S. DEBUT AT THE PHOENIX ART MUSEUM

Romanticism and rock’n’roll are two separate species of style. They rarely share a sentence, let alone a runway. So when independent designer Anna Sui decided to lock them together inside fashion’s proverbial showroom, the two hashed out their aesthetic differences to create Sui’s nostalgic rocker M.O. that V know and love. And now, tucked within the Phoenix Art Museum’s Steele gallery, over 80 ensembles from the creative’s archive are on display for the keen and curious. Since debuting her first show in 1991, Sui has launched over 80 collections of ready-to-wear garments, accessories, cosmetics, and fragrances, masterfully melding vintage codes with her rebellious, saturated aesthetic. Her work builds a graphic and imaginative universe, one in which cowgirls and hippie chicks can coexist peacefully with hula girls and surfer nomads. In her new exhibition, The World of Anna Sui, the designer samples liberally from books, films, art movements, and history, filtering references through a lens of psychedelic color and playful irreverence. She favors unconventional materials—picture army surplus jackets, Japanese hankies, wood-soled platforms, papier-mâché mannequin heads—and resurrects their stylistic presence with an inventively theatrical flair.

The World of Anna Sui will run through Sept. 28, 2025 at the Phoenix Art Gallery

KENNY SCHARF DEBUTS HIS LARGEST EXHIBITION AT MAM SHANGHAI

This summer, Kenny Scharf’s feelings factory will open its doors at Shanghai’s Modern Art Museum. Aptly titled Emotional and curated by Shai Baitel, Artistic Director of MAM Shanghai, the exhibition, which stands as Scharf’s largest solo show to date, will run from June 29 to October 8 and showcase over 120 works spanning across five decades of the Los Angeles-based artist’s career. Organized into six feeling-states—anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and awe—Emotional is a cartoon-catharsis of faces melting, grinning, and contorting in Scharf’s signature Pop Surrealist style.

Informed by a distinctly ‘80s street-art aesthetic, the series dives headfirst into the roiling waves of human emotion’s choppy waters. Fear not, for lifeguards are in attendance. Well, at least their tower will be. Kenny Scharf’s Beach Club, complete with real sand, palm trees, beach huts, and vendor stands will sell kitschy mementos of pop artists past. Stretching across an entire floor of the museum, the Beach Club is less installation and more utopian time warp, converting its surroundings into a wistfully gaudy Venice Beach escape with weekly parties hosted by select DJs (flip flops recommended, bare feet encouraged). Scharf, a veteran of New York’s East Village art scene in the 1980s, and a mentee of Andy Warhol, built his practice around the democratization of his art and ‘a personal challenge to produce the best work possible every time.’ “Through Emotional, we wanted to create an immersive journey that could resonate in a digitally mediated world,” the artist notes. So, with its psychedelic cheer and vividly hippie charge, Scharf’s show asks us to take our feelings and fun a little more seriously. With the advent of AI and the uncertainty seeping into every technological interaction, it seems that sooner, rather than later, we’ll have to.

Emotional by Kenny Scharf will run from June 29 to October 8 at MAM Shanghai

GIORGIO ARMANI PRIVE CELEBRATES 20 YEARS OF COUTURE WITH EXHIBITION AT ARMANI/SILOS IN MILAN

In a fashion first, Giorgio Armani brings his haute couture collection home with the GIORGIO ARMANI PRIVÉ 2005–2025 exhibition, running through the end of the year at Armani/Silos in Milan. Launched in Paris in 2005 (and traditionally shown there, as well), Privé garments will now be displayed across four levels of the Silos—a permanent exhibition space dedicated to showcasing various aspects of the designer’s creations and career—and will reveal 150 couture looks curated by Mr. Armani himself.

Pieces are either showcased individually or arranged in themed rooms curated by color or artistic inspiration, demonstrating the evolution of Armani’s vision through luxurious fabrics and intricate hand embroidery. Entirely intentional and utterly dazzling (and V are not just talking about the jewel-like needlepoint), the show serves as a meditation on elegance, expertise, and an irrevocably enduring style. In other words, hallmarks of a career that spans red carpets (Cate Blanchett’s Swarovski crystal gown at the 2007 Academy Awards) and commissions for custom-made designs (a champagne silk gown Demi Moore wore when nabbing her first Golden Globe earlier this year). Such sartorial icons, along with many more, will be on display at the GIORGIO ARMANI PRIVÉ 2005–2025 exhibition, running through December 28, 2025.

JUDY CHICAGO TRANSFORMS THE ICONIC MISS DIOR FRAGRANCE INTO A WORK OF ART

To not recognize the name Christian Dior is to live under a particularly isolated (and hopelessly grounded) rock. But to fail to identify Catherine Dior is a sin markedly more forgivable. The beloved sister of the French couturier, Catherine is the oft-forgotten inspiration behind the Maison’s archetypal fragrance, Miss Dior. In 1944, after joining the Resistance during World War II, Catherine was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Ravensbrück, the largest concentration camp for women in the German Reich. After her release, she began cultivating flowers, specifically the roses and jasmine that were used in the first Miss Dior perfume. It is this strength and fiery temperament that informs American feminist artist Judy Chicago’s latest creation, a colorful couture trunk guided by Chicago’s bold psychedelic aesthetic. Swathed in a sumptuous velvet lining and trimmed with a vivid blue floral print, the hand-crafted object adapts her desired motifs to demonstrate a series of vibrant references in honor of Catherine Dior. Perfumer Francis Kurkdjian lends his olfactory expertise, collaborating with Chicago on the trunk and revisiting the iconic scent to blend a radiant Italian mandarin essence with the latent sensuality of jasmine sambac absolute. In addition to the bottle’s reimagined bow, decorated with the pink and blue pattern behind Chicago’s first installation, “The Female Divine,” a selection of mantras—”Brave and courageous,” “Captain of her own soul”— adorn the box’s surface, forming a 3-D manifesto in celebration of the Dior heroine’s life force. You’ll remember the name now, won’t you?

This story appears in the pages of V155: now available for purchase!