RICHMOND, Va. – The shattered mirror gown Halle Berry wore to the 2025 Oscars radiantly sparkled in natural light as guests walked the red carpet at the Branch Museum of Design in Richmond, Virginia.
This gown, along with 34 others, was presented in the exhibit “Undeniable: The Designs of Christian Siriano + Ashley Longshore,” displayed at the Branch in partnership with VCUarts from Jan. 17 to March 22, 2026.
The show spotlit the work of influential fashion designer Christian Siriano, who has designed outfits for celebrity fashion icons including Beyoncé, Celine Dion, and Lady Gaga. Larger-than-life pop art paintings by Siriano’s longtime friend and associate, Ashley Longshore, who is commonly referred to as “feminist Andy Warhol,” adorned gallery walls.
“They both have a rebellious spirit, but their medium is glamour,” said Katie Foster, the Branch’s acting executive director.
From New York runways and Hollywood red carpets to smaller cities like Richmond, Siriano and Longshore’s work affirm that confidence, glamour, and self-expression are not defined by size, age, gender identity, or location.
“Undeniable” was the latest under Artistic Director Kristen Cavallo, who initiated the museum’s rebrand to the only design museum in Virginia.
When Cavallo began her position at the Branch, she considered which exhibits would generate enough foot traffic to reposition the museum solely as a design museum, and thought of Sirinao, who she’d met in 2021, when Cavallo was CEO of the Martin Agency, a Richmond advertising agency.
As the exhibit’s curator, Cavallo incorporated a red carpet in the Long Gallery as a nod to Siriano’s book, “The New Red Carpet,” which spotlights his iconic red carpet fashion and behind-the-scenes moments focusing on diversity, inclusion, and body positivity.
Cavallo said that most of the gowns in the next room, the Great Hall, were not red carpet moments, but major stage moments.
“I wanted it to have a different theme and a different vibe, a different energy, so I thought about Ashley’s [Longshore] beautiful pop bedazzled art,” Cavallo said. “They both have a similar sensibility about speaking for everyone and speaking in little words or designs that are inclusive and broad.”
Katie Hoak, the Branch Museum’s Marketing Director, said, unlike museums that keep pieces behind glass, the Branch made this exhibit more accessible by allowing guests to take an extra step in and walk among the designs.
“It’s like that sense of being close to something and feeling like you’re almost able to touch it. It is a childlike quality that we never really grow out of as adults,” Hoak said.
Shortly before the exhibit’s official opening, Siriano hosted an illustration workshop with nearly 80 VCUarts fashion students.
VCUarts Associate Professor and Chair of the Fashion Design + Merchandising department, Kimberly Guthrie, said that the Branch had proposed the workshop over the summer, but it seemed unattainable due to the cost. She then contacted the university’s development team and discovered that a department alumna, Rachel Grove Dalton, helped support the exhibit.
Dalton agreed to set up a workshop with the assistance of the Pollak Society, a university donor group.
Helena Dauverd, a Fashion Design sophomore, was one of the attending students. She said Siriano taught them to make quick, preliminary fashion design sketches and that ten students would have their work selected by Siriano to be presented at a Pollak Society event.
“I was one of the people who was chosen. It was interesting because I never took a drawing class before I came to VCU,” Dauverd said. “He had chosen nine, came over and looked at mine and said, ‘Fix the head, and you’re number ten.’”
Each student received their own signature marker in the color of Celine Dion’s yellow tulle ball gown as a keepsake.
Graphics: Ava Soong