The Work
V&A Collection
Eight years continuous producer for the Victoria and Albert Museum. Exhibition merchandise for Frida Kahlo, Mary Quant, Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk, Fashioning Masculinity, DIVA, Alice in Wonderland, and Revolution, each project managed from artwork brief to gift shop floor.
8
Years continuous producer
7+
Major exhibitions
V&A
Gift shop & exhibition retail
Eight years inside the V&A Museum
A continuous production relationship with the V&A Museum spanning eight years is built on trust and mutual understanding: that every project, every detail, will be taken care of from start to finish. Exhibition after exhibition, buying cycle after buying cycle, each one with a non-negotiable launch date tied to a public opening.
The V&A Museum's merchandise team works to exacting standards. Colour fidelity to original archive material. Fabric choices that complement the exhibition's curatorial intent. Price points calibrated for the museum's retail offering. Quantities that can be fulfilled on time, with the quality consistent from the first piece to the last.
Every scarf produced for the V&A started as a brief, an artwork, a colour reference, an exhibition theme, and ended as a finished product on the gift shop floor, approved by the museum's buying and licensing teams at every stage.
That process, and the relationships it requires, is what "eight years continuous" actually means.
The exhibitions
A selection of the V&A Museum exhibitions for which Bhavna Rishi London produced licensed merchandise, together with the latest pieces for the museum's collection ranges.
2018
Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up
Silk and modal scarves produced for one of the V&A's most popular exhibitions, a sell-out that drew record visitor numbers. Colour-matched to the exhibition's rich palette and Kahlo's own textile references.
2019–2020
Mary Quant
A retrospective on the designer who changed the way women dressed. Merchandise reflected Quant's bold graphic sensibility, a design language that required precise colour separation and clean printing.
2022
Fashioning Masculinity
Large-format modal scarf produced in collaboration with photographer Luke Edward Hall. A technically demanding brief, oversized format, precise tonal matching, and a specific fabric weight the V&A's buying team required.
2023
DIVA
Modal scarves for the V&A's exploration of the diva as cultural icon. Rich jewel tones with high-saturation digital printing, production managed against a tight exhibition launch window.
2023
Alice in Wonderland
Silk scarf based on original V&A illustrations. Complex multi-colour artwork requiring exacting colour management at print stage to honour the original archive imagery.
2024
Revolution: Fashion & Music
Featuring artwork by Alan Aldridge, the psychedelic illustrator who defined the visual language of the 1960s and 70s. Licensed through Iconic Images; a project that bridged two longstanding client relationships.
2025
Steiner & Co florals silk scarf
This floral silk scarf, adapted from a floral furnishing fabric created by Steiner & Co., Lancashire in 1903, held in the V&A collection, was carefully transformed from digital art to a gorgeous printed scarf. After meticulous colour matching to the various florals, we printed this artwork on soft luxury silk and stitched flat-hemmed edges to give it a seamless luxury finish.
2025
Poppy floral kaftan kimono jacket
A kaftan kimono jacket in a sweeping poppy floral adapted from artwork held in the V&A collection. The second jacket in the range after the Kikusui throwover, developed through the same process: colour matching to the original, print staging so the pattern sits consistently on every piece, and sampling until the drape falls beautifully.
2026
Thistle Arabesques silk scarf
This luxurious pure silk scarf features a design of thistle arabesques with a contrasting pale green border. The pattern is adapted from a 19th-century colour woodblock print for wallpaper held in the V&A archive. This is a 120x120cm scarf that needed colour matching, a few mock-ups to ensure the colour is right, finished with flat-hemmed edges to give this a luxurious feel.
Also produced for: Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk (2020) and additional seasonal gift shop ranges across the eight-year period.
2025
The Kikusui throwover
In 2025, we made our first jacket for the V&A Museum.
It's called the Kikusui throwover, a mid-length kimono-style piece in soft, sustainable modal that floats when you move. The chrysanthemum design is adapted from a Japanese quilt cover made in Fukuoka prefecture in the late nineteenth century, created with a resist-dye technique called tsutsugaki.
Taking an artwork like that from the archive to something you can actually wear is the part most people see. The process behind it is often missed. Here is some of what went into this one:
- Weeks of colour matching against the V&A's archive digital original to get the indigo right.
- The pattern carefully developed, sampled, and graded into a wearable garment.
- Print staging: where the digital print is laid out as a single rectangle so the pattern sits in the same place on every piece, then composed carefully so it falls beautifully when the jacket is thrown on.
- Measurements matched to the pattern's original sheet, retweaking, resampling, reiterating until the sample comes back as expected.
The whole process takes two to three months before production is confirmed and delivered. That is the quiet craft behind it.
Watching a piece of nineteenth-century fabric transformed into something this beautiful, on an ordinary morning, is still my favourite part of this job.
What working with the V&A Museum requires
Museum merchandise sits at the intersection of licensing, production, and retail, and each one has its own precise requirements that the production partner needs to understand and honour.
Licensing: the artwork belongs to someone else and the approval process is formal. Every colour, every hem style, every text element requires sign-off before going to print.
Production: museum buyers have a quality threshold that reflects their brand. The fabric weight, the finish, the edge work, all of it matters and is checked to the highest quality standards.
Retail: the product has to sell. Pricing, presentation, replenishment, these are commercial realities that sit alongside the curatorial ones.
Eight years of managing all three, for one of the world's most recognised cultural institutions, is the foundation that makes everything else possible, and that is what we pioneer in, and the only place where story-making heritage pieces meets beautifully created printed merchandise.
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