Kendall Jenner opened Vogue World: Hollywood dripping in Swarovski crystals in an original costume from Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge—top hat included. The very same costume (well, a replica, to be precise, though it is Jenner’s hat!) is currently sitting in an exhibition space on Sunset Boulevard, a seven-minute drive—LA traffic permitting—from the Paramount Studios lot where the Vogue extravaganza took place. It’s one of several spectacular pieces of fashion and costume history that have been included in the latest iteration of Swarovski’s “Masters of Light” exhibition, which has been curated by the British fashion journalist and well-regarded “fashion geek” (his words) Alexander Fury, in collaboration with Giovanna Engelbert, the Austrian house’s global creative director.
It’s been a fabulous week for fashion and film, bookended by Vogue World on Sunday and the public opening of the exhibition today. This “Masters of Light” is honoring 130 years of Swarovski, while also celebrating its enduring presence in fashion and film costuming, and, of course, on celebrities! Fury has included everything from a parure worn by Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Harry Styles’s Egonlab jumpsuit from the 2023 Grammy’s to a fall 2002 couture bridal gown from Christian Lacroix famously worn by Madonna and even the crown worn by Ariana Grande’s Glinda in Wicked.
The exhibition is arranged across two main spaces, one devoted to “Silver Screen Style” and featuring film costumes in conversation with fashion ensembles, and another focusing on “Pop Icons,” meaning pieces worn by stars. Most memorable are the pieces Fury has selected that serve as cultural touchpoints across different moments in history. The famous naked dress by Jean Louis worn by Marilyn Monroe in 1962, and re-worn by Kim Kardashian at the 2023 Met Gala, has its own dedicated room, and a Thierry Mugler and Mr. Pearl-created cowboy ensemble worn by Connie Fleming on the runway in 1992 and by Beyoncé in the visuals for her Cowboy Carter album in 2024 also features prominently.
Here, Fury discusses the making of the exhibition, and shares key details that are sure to delight his fellow fashion fanatics.
There is a fun alignment between this exhibition and Vogue World: Hollywood. I’d love to hear about that.
This is the third exhibition I’ve done with Swarovski. “Masters of Light” first opened in 2023 in Shanghai, and then we did an iteration last year in Milan. We brought it this time to Los Angeles, and because of the change of location, there’s a change of theme. Coming to LA, it has to be around cinema. You guys were doing Vogue World when we were talking about starting to do this, and then it all felt kind of serendipitous in terms of timing and in terms of thematics. There is quite, as you’ve seen, a strong fashion angle to it, but it’s also this kind of very interesting place of the intersection of Hollywood, pop culture, and fashion. I think it’s interesting that Swarovski sits at the center of all of that.
Looking at the pieces in the exhibition, it’s really impressive to see how omnipresent Swarovski is.
The Josephine Baker costume is the thing that I find completely insane. It’s 100 years old. It’s from one of her first performances, and the fact it still exists is such an amazing thing. It’s in the archive, and we had the skirt reconstructed, because the ostrich feathers had rotted away ages ago. To have that and the Beyoncé and Cardi B looks that very much pay homage to Josephine Baker, it felt quite nice. Also to introduce her to an audience that maybe doesn’t know that much about Josephine Baker. I’m obsessed with her, I’m sure you are obsessed with her, but I don’t think your average 18-year-old is, but they could easily be.
You mentioned an archive…
Yes. Swarovski has an archive in a place called Wattens, which is where they’re based. When they would work with designers, a lot of the time they would have them either replicate an outfit or donate the outfit to them. They have an amazing outfit from the first collection they collaborated with Lee McQueen on, which was spring 1999. There’s the Josephine Baker costume, the Phantom of the Opera outfit from the Joel Schumacher film, the Cinderella slipper from the live action Cinderella. They have some incredible things. The earliest piece is from the House of Worth from 1895 to 1900. So it’s literally the first five years of Swarovski, and they were supplying Worth at that point. They started at the top of the game. They were working with Josephine Baker in the 1930s. They were working with MGM and Paramount, and Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. For me, as a massive fashion geek, to be able to pull these pieces and then to also work with Giovanna is amazing; she has such incredible taste and also wants those big fashion moments that she loves and that I love, too.
How did you go about deciding what you think has the most cultural value? Say, the Mugler piece worn by Beyoncé for Cowboy Carter. I’m assuming those considerations are part of the process?
The Beyoncé piece is interesting because I actually approached Mugler about getting it last year when we had the show in Milan for a different section in that exhibition. Mugler said they couldn’t lend it, as it was on loan for something else. Later I obviously found out it was for Cowboy Carter. But I think it’s nice for there to be some things that feel maybe slightly more obscure—it was really important to have the Greta Garbo and the Marlene Dietrich outfits to show the depth of Swarovski’s history with cinema and Hollywood, as well as the Moulin Rouge!, which is so instantly recognizable. And the Shakespeare In Love outfit—you know exactly what these things are when you see them. So, for me, it was really important to have the more historical things to show the depth and breadth of that history as well as these super-recognizable 21st century things. With the Beyoncé piece, you get both, it’s super-recognizable, but also there’s all these other histories that are kind of interesting and tied into it.
I’m curious about you liaising with houses and pulling things from other archives, like, say, Daphne Guinness’s pink Chanel.
I flew here with that one; sometimes you have to hand carry [laughs]. I love Daphne, she’s someone who I’ve been really privileged to have a relationship with for years. I’ve worked with her on three music videos, and she’s always supported this. This time she lent this amazing Chanel piece. I didn’t know this, but it’s the show sample. They sold her the couture piece from the show. That’s what she believes it is; she thinks it’s the only one they produced. It was quite funny because I was supposed to pick it up last Friday, and then she sent me this text message like, actually, could you pick it up on Monday? Because I’m going to the British Museum Pink Ball, and it’s the only pink thing I own. Giovanna was texting me being like, are we getting the Daphne Guinness? I’ve just seen her wearing it. But that’s Daphne, one day you’re wearing it and the next day it’s in a museum exhibition. That’s wardrobe goals.
Before you went to the archive and before you started digging, was there something that you thought: this has to be in it?
When we started talking about it, and we came up with the idea, it was actually Giovanna who said, I think it would be great if we tried to do fashion and costume. And I was like, okay, let’s have a think. I started to research and see what costumes were around, and I found this amazing costume collector called Larry McQueen. He’s got a costume collection. It’s all online, it’s all documented, photographed and available online. And he’s just released a book. I can’t even remember how I stumbled onto it, but it was to the point where I was checking if it was real, because it was so unreal. He had the Cleopatra costume worn by Elizabeth Taylor. And he’s a bit like me. We are two men who spend all of our money on women’s dresses [laughs]. I found that he had the Dietrich dress. Now, Greta Garbo is great. Marilyn Monroe is great. But I live for Dietrich as the person I’ve been obsessed with since I was a teenager. And so when I found out that this dress existed, because I’m a geek, I knew straight away that there was a Yves Saint Laurent dress that was based on this dress, and that Marc Jacobs had based a dress on the Saint Laurent dress. So I knew we had to get them together because they belong with each other. For me, that was kind of the trigger point.
When we were mounting, I sent a picture of the Marc Jacobs dress we were using to Marc, and told him, ‘we’re mounting this dress; it’s going next to this Dietrich dress.’ And he said it is based on that Yves Saint Laurent dress, but also the brocade of the dress is a blown-up version of the brocade of a Chanel suit worn by Elizabeth Taylor, which I love. I had already written the fucking caption for it [laughs], but I would have loved to put that in my caption alongside the dress. I just loved that additional layer. That’s how Marc’s brain works. There’s a level of historicism, and then there’s this, and this, and this.
I
m curious about the more contemporary stuff. You have Doja Cat’s Schiaparelli moment, the Harry Styles jumpsuit. Some of these things have been seen in so many ways from every single angle around the world. How do you decide which ones you want to bring back for this?
The Doja moment is so iconic, we had a special mannequin made with all the crystals. We have the amazing Mugler from 1995 that Cardi B wore. I wanted it because Cardi B wore it, and I love that it was a direct reference to Josephine Baker, and it’s opposite that mannequin. What I do is that thing of having something historical and then something really contemporary. I think there’s something very nice about being able to dance backwards and forwards between those two points in time and not feel too historical and equally not feel too contemporary. I don’t want it to just be, here’s a bunch of clothes from the last five years.
I always remember what Max Hollein, the head of the Met Museum, said to me when I met him in San Francisco a few years ago. We were talking about fashion exhibitions, and he said, well, fashion is the new Picasso. Fashion exhibitions get the kind of attendance that you only used to get with an artist like Picasso, people love to come and see fashion exhibitions. And that’s the really nice thing with this, fashion is pop culture.
The last thing I’ll ask you. I noticed there’s only two menswear pieces. The Thom Browne and the Harry Styles. I’m fascinated by the Harry inclusion. It makes so much sense in terms of the actual look, and in terms of Harry himself, but it’s also an interesting one. It’s menswear, it’s from an independently-run small brand.
Egonlab is a brand that Giovanna came across when she was on a jury for a prize; she said she went up to them and said, if you want to do anything, let me know. They approached her a couple of months later and they were like, we’re doing something, we can’t tell you who it’s for, but would you consider working with us? I like that it’s Harry, but then it’s also kind of a reference to Elvis. And it is just a young brand that Giovanna loves. It’s very much the way that McQueen started with Swarovski 30 years ago. This thing of supporting young talent. I think with Harry, he’s such a pop icon. I think it is an important one to have—it’s not just ball gowns. We’ve got to have men in there. We’ve got to have these different representations. It’s showing that there’s a whole sort of Swarovski universe. Anyone can wear Swarovski. Anyone can sparkle.
Don’t you love it when someone gives you a great last line?
Yes. That’s a last line [laughs].
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