Bold truth: design is a mirror for our times, not just a collection of pretty objects. The Victoria and Albert Museum has refreshed its Design 1990-Now galleries, weaving together everyday items and historic curiosities to show how design shapes, and reflects, our world today. Get ready for a tour that expands how you see the objects around you.
What links the first baby monitor, Nigeria’s 2018 World Cup kit, an 80s boombox, fragments of Edward Snowden’s computer, a “Please offer me a seat” badge, and a Labubu? They all live in the V&A’s Design 1990-Now galleries, which have just reopened. Spread across two upper-floor rooms, the display also includes a collection of antique books, grounding contemporary objects in a longer history.
The exhibit layout mixes themes rather than following strict chronology. With 250 items, including 60 new additions, you’ll see multiple takes on a single idea across decades. In the housing and living section, for example, you’ll encounter a 1986 power suit alongside a plastic-lined blouse used by Chinese factory workers to avoid searches, and fast-fashion jeans from the Rana Plaza era in Bangladesh—visually linking different struggles and moments in labor history.
History repeats in design here: a 1992 poster demanding no more racist murders sits next to a 2014 commemoration of Eric Garner, underscoring how social justice issues echo across time. Eleven objects come from Rapid Response, a public-participation program inviting people to propose contemporary items for the collection. Among them are Ukraine’s Snake Island stamps symbolizing resistance, a “life medal” for environmental activists, and—yes—the Labubu.
Corinna Gardner, the V&A’s senior curator of design and digital, oversaw the update. She notes that the galleries are meant to wake visitors up to the present through the lens of the past: to inform current understanding and imagine a future shaped by design. “Material things help us navigate our place in the world,” she says, pointing to familiar items like an Ikea lamp as evidence of scale and ubiquity in manufacturing and everyday life.
The 1977 Apple home computer and a contemporaneous ad that idealizes working from home mark the birth of a phenomenon we now take for granted. The ad’s scene—one husband in the foreground, a wife in the back making dinner—offers a window into the gender norms of the era and how technology can redefine domestic life.
Backstories add extra color: Noguchi’s 1937 baby monitor was inspired by the Lindbergh kidnapping, while plywood’s rise as a mass-produced material traces to Charles and Ray Eames’ wartime plywood splints. The burkini, created in 2004 by designer Aheda Zanetti after noticing her niece’s discomfort playing netball in a hijab, shows how design responds to real-life needs. A surprisingly simple carbon-fiber rope segment powers the lifts in Jeddah Tower, connecting everyday materials to extraordinary feats of engineering.
The final section concentrates on data, communication, and design’s evolution over roughly the last 25 years. Here you’ll find Edward Snowden’s laptop—on loan from the Guardian archives—an artifact the curators describe as essential to our modern history, illustrating ongoing tensions around the public realm in the digital age.
And yes, the Labubu makes an appearance again, nestled among antique books with the librarians watching over them. It’s a playful reminder that design can disrupt everyday spaces just as it enriches them.
Gardner emphasizes that the reimagined galleries are meant to provoke discussion among staff, students, families, and casual visitors. Rather than merely celebrating design excellence, the space is designed to be discursive, expansive, and open to questions about what design is and can be in our lives.
