Ruling With Scissors

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A decade in fashion can seem an eternity. "I'm more part of the periphery," Martin Grant told Time in 1996, about to open his first boutique in a former barbershop in the Rue des Rosiers. A few years before, the former Young Australian Designer of the Year had moved from Melbourne to Paris burned out by his early success. But in the 10 years since, Grant, 39, has calmly gone about his business, producing two collections a year with little more noise than the sound of his seamstress scissors. Along the way, his exquisite tailoring caught the eye of Vogue tastemaker Andre Leon Talley. In 2003, upscale department store Barneys asked him to design for its private label, and the following year he turned down the top job at couture house Céline, preferring to stay small. Which is how this so-called "quiet man" has come to occupy a unique spot on fashion's center stage.

In other respects, the world has moved closer to Grant's way of thinking. In the mid-'90s, fashion began steering away from minimalism towards more voluminous shapes, and the designer (who was studying early 20th century pieces in museum collections) emerged with his own understated form of maximalism. From stage left flew his corsets, crinolines and Mary Poppins coats. It was around this time that the National Gallery of Victoria started thinking of Grant as the potential subject of an exhibition. "His work is about evolution, not revolution," says curator Katie Somerville, who sees in Grant's designs "an uncanny sense of the path that he's on and the things that are important to him."

In "Martin Grant, Paris," at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia until May 7, that sense of evolution is astonishing to see. If the saying goes, "give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man," then in Grant's case the age was four. The show begins with a suite of his kindergarten paintings of fairytale princesses, with the real subject being the bright swirl of their gowns. Displayed alongside is the full-blown bloom of that boyhood obsession: one of the huge crinolines Grant constructed for a 1994 exhibition in the gardens of a chateau outside of Paris. That show, Habiller Déshabiller, grew out of Grant's earlier studies in sculpture, and what makes the current one more than a fashion display is the way the designer's forms seem to emerge from the darkened space, fanciful but grounded by Grant's deep sense of form and structure.

For him, God is in the details. Growing up in the suburbs, Grant was inspired by his grandmother, a dressmaker whose restrained palette and love of old-fashioned fabrics have become the hallmarks of his style. Using the seamstress' mannequin as his sculptor's block, he fashions clothes from the inside out. In London he learned bespoke tailoring from Koji Tatsuno, and today his cut is tellingly clean (the French say dépouillé), from the topstitch seam of a Napoleon jacket or the diamond pleat of a corset dress, to the fluted sleeve of the Anna coat from his most recent collection. "He understands subtle things that add something to the wearer's experience," says Somerville, "as well as being flattering and beautiful and classic." No wonder dedicated wearers include such style icons as Naomi Campbell, Lee Radziwill and Cate Blanchett. As it happens, the actress was spotted wheeling a stroller through the show late last month, transported by the floating corsets and flying crinolines. One can see the appeal. Elegance is a rare commodity these days, and Martin Grant cuts a timeless fit.