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LONDON - Kylie Minogue made her first public appearance since her split from Olivier Martinez as one of Britain's most venerable museums staged the first show it has ever dedicated to a pop star.
The Australia pop diva's leopard-skin catsuits and pink-bejewelled corsets were draped across the halls of the Victoria and Albert Museum whose advance bookings record has been broken by the Kylie show.
"I was absolutely speechless," Minogue said after touring the exhibition which displays lavish dresses and outlandish hats from her nine tours.
"It is a very strange feeling, I am honoured and overwhelmed," she said after being given a private viewing before an opening night show which was more like a glitzy film premiere than a museum launch.
For critics who asked if the exhibition qualified as art, the 38-year-old Minogue said: "Art is what you like or what you don't like."
The exhibition tops a tumultuous two years for Minogue, forced to abandon a world tour in 2005 after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
She underwent successful surgery in Melbourne in May 2005 and a course of chemotherapy in Paris where her former boyfriend, French actor Olivier Martinez has a home.
The couple announced last weekend that their four-year romance had ended, saying the split was "mutual and amicable".
Reporters in the line-up outside the museum were under strict instructions not to mention her private life and all she would say when asked about how she felt was "I'm here tonight ... It's all good."
Among the displays were the overalls she wore in 1988 as Charlene in the Australian soap opera Neighbours which first propelled her to stardom.
Also on display were the gold lame hot pants she sported in the video for her 2000 hit single Spinning Around.
Exhibitions chief Vicky Broackes paid tribute to the staying power of the Grammy-award winning singer, a pop chameleon who has constantly re-invented her image.
"She is the only star apart from Madonna to have had number one hits in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s," Broackes told Reuters.
Wearing a purple backless gown, Minogue posed for photographers on a freezing winter's night before signing autographs for fans and joining guests served champagne by waiters in cut-away T-shirts and feathered masks.
Minogue rang her mother in Australia to tell her about the exhibition "and she was in tears".
In a big statement displayed across the entrance to the exhibition, Kylie pays tribute to her parents who followed her around on tour, scooping up glittery outfits from the dressing room floor after performances.
"Were it not for my parents, I'm sure this collection would be the size of a suitcase rather than an exhibition space."
- REUTERS
