V&A Chanel exhibition to feature 200 looks across seven decades

Blockbuster to include origin story of famous tweed suit and not gloss over controversial wartime past

A pink tweed two-piece worn by the actor Lauren Bacall on a holiday in Biarritz in 1959 and a minimalist black silk trouser suit in which the fashion editor Diana Vreeland entertained at home in New York will be among the outfits on display in London in the autumn, when the exhibition Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto opens at the V&A.

The first Chanel retrospective to be staged by a major British museum, the show has been significantly expanded from versions previously staged in Paris and Melbourne. Of the 200 outfits on display, 122 are new additions. The curator Oriole Cullen, who also masterminded the V&A’s most recent fashion blockbuster, Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, said the team had “scoured international collections for never seen before pieces, some over 100 years old”.