A Wes Anderson Wonderland Just Landed in London
The Design Museum unveils the landmark retrospective full of eccentricities.
Saturated hues, outlandish costumes and sugarcoated sets full of eccentricity, Wes Anderson aficionados can spot those meticulously framed vignettes from a mile away. And now, London is getting full access. The Design Museum unveiled its major new exhibition, “Wes Anderson: The Archives,” a landmark retrospective celebrating one of cinema’s most adored directors.
Inside, over 700 artefacts pull visitors directly into Anderson’s universe, including original sketches, costumes, Polaroids, fictional books, art and dozens of stop-motion puppets (including George Clooney’s Fantastic Mr. Fox character). Fashion fans will clock Margot Tenenbaum’s iconic Fendi mink coat, worn by Gwyneth Paltrow in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), while design lovers can pore over the intricate candy-pink model of the Grand Budapest Hotel. Intimate and irresistibly curated, it’s Anderson’s world up close.
The exhibition marks the first UK showing of the director’s archives, following its initial run in Paris, and brings Anderson’s career into the present with material from his latest feature, The Phoenician Scheme (2025). More than two dozen objects from the film are on display, from a Dunhill pipe to a jewel-encrusted dagger crafted by contemporary artist Harumi Klossowska de Rola.
For the true Wesophiles, the experience goes beyond glass cases and ephemera. The museum will host a series of screenings, including a rare showing of Anderson’s original Bottle Rocket short (1993), the 14-minute film that later became his first feature, starring long-time collaborator Owen Wilson. Visitors can also catch Hotel Chevalier (2007), the prologue to The Darjeeling Limited, and Castello Cavalcanti (2013), created with Prada.
Across three decades, the director has quietly collected thousands of objects from his sets, everything from props and costumes to work-in-progress materials. This exhibition, created in collaboration with La Cinémathèque Française and the Design Museum, with Anderson’s direct involvement, offers a rare, up-close encounter with the items that shaped his cinematic language. For cinephiles, fashion lovers and design obsessives alike, stepping into these archives is entering a world where every detail matters, because in Anderson’s universe, it always does.
The exhibition is on view at the Design Museum from November 21 to July 26, 2026.
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