Figures dwarfed by the massive biblical scenes look down at their guide book and then peer up, and up again, to pick out the 'not-to-be-missed' detail. A woman might turn around only to find her partner has sloped off down the other end of the hall, guidebook open in one hand, ticking off the Renaissance masterpieces. 'The Miraculous Draught of Fishes'? Check. 'The Healing of the Lame Man'? Check. A haloed Christ and his apostles are frozen in various poses . . . preaching, adoring, repenting. This is a museum.

Same gallery. Middle of June. About 7.20pm.

It is heaving. Several hundred people flank the temporary fashion runway. An equal number of glowing mobile phones are held aloft in anticipation. The DJ starts pumping out the music and, on cue, the first of fashion designer Gareth Pugh's creations strides down the catwalk. The look is a Marilyn Manson nightmare. Pugh's models are vacuum-packed into rubber gimp suits, all features banished under the lycra outer skin. One model wears a giant twisted-balloon poodle costume. Another is a fetishized take on Narnia's Mr Tumnus. The inflated PVC jackets and chequered cashmere dresses seem restrained in comparison. Almost. This is London's Victoria and Albert Museum, better known as the V&A.

Orchestrating the event is Dublin-born Oriole Cullen, a fashion curator at the V&A. She is responsible for the museum's 'Fashion in Motion' programme, which brings catwalk shows by leading designers to the V&A. Crucially, the shows are free and open to the public. "It's a chance for people to experience the world of high fashion. The majority have never been to a fashion show of a big-name designer and so the excitement is palpable."

In this case the object of attention was the red-hot prodigy designer, 25-year-old Gareth Pugh. "I remember seeing his graduate show in 2003 and it was incredible. He was the last person to show and these amazing pieces came out on the stage and everyone . . . everyone . . . was blown away, " recalls Cullen.

"Although his work is unique and you couldn't pigeon-hole it, he's symbolic of young London. Internationally, people think that London is very much the ideas centre for a lot of fashion. There's been a really big resurgence and the V&A is engaging directly with these young contemporary designers."

Ah yes, the V&A. It easily fulfils the most important criterion of any great museum.

You can happily get lost in it. Room upon room, large galleries, exhibition and study spaces, even the lovely dimly-lit corridors at the back of the building are all devoted to the decorative arts. Sculpture, furniture, fashion, ceramics, prints and photography, ironwork, jewellery and wallpaper all make up the collection of what one former director described as "an extremely capacious handbag". It was founded 150 years ago to inspire British manufacturers with the very best examples of design. "In fashion at that time, you're seeing the emergence of crinoline, and skirts were getting wider and wider. You get a lot of invention like crinoline cage structures. Some of Gareth Pugh's structures, " Cullen smiles, "aren't that far removed."

The museum successfully juggles its commitment to the past with a celebration of the best of today's design. 'Fashion in Motion' is one way of doing the latter as are recent contemporary commissions like Massive Attack's wonderful sound and light garden installation.

The museum goes into party mode on the last Friday of every month when guest DJs, live performances, debates, film screenings, themed displays and cocktails explode any outdated view of what a museum should be.

The V&A may not have the iconic imagery of the Tate Modern or the British Museum, but the museum's strength lies in its ability to constantly shift its shape and image. On entering, the visitor is confronted by Dale Chihuly's glowing and writhing chandelier, commissioned by the museum a few years ago. Consisting of hundreds of blue and green blown-glass elements, it hangs in front of the High Victorian iron screen from Hereford Cathedral, itself a masterpiece of over 14,000 crafted details. Separated by over a century, the two items epitomise the creativity which the V&A was founded to celebrate.

Oriole Cullen's next 'Fashion in Motion' takes place in September and will feature one of India's most talented and creative designers, Manish Arora. "It's such a nice contrast. Every piece Gareth sent out was black and white. This is going to be the full spectrum. Manish said 'I want gold. I'm Indian, it has to be gold.' His clothing is so colourful and vibrant and kitsch." Arora has collaborated with sports brand Reebok and is producing a new range of MAC cosmetics. In autumn, he will become the first Indian designer to showcase his collection at Paris fashion week. The V&A fashion curator feels the museum's show couldn't be more timely. "New York, London, Paris and Milan . . . these are the international fashion centres but new markets in India and China are opening up. Plus Vogue India is launching in September."

A graduate in History of Art and English Literature from UCD, Oriole moved to London for the Courtauld Institute's MA in History of Dress. Before joining the V&A, she worked at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on their Dangerous Liaisons exhibition of 18thcentury dress. While at the Museum of London her exhibitions included 'Stolen Skins?', an examination of the controversial role of fur in fashion. "That was really interesting, we had to have training in how to handle letter bombs.

I also know, " she adds wryly, "how to handle a ferret if it's left loose in the gallery."

Back home in Dublin, her favourite museums include the Hugh Lane Gallery and the National Gallery; she especially enjoyed the latter's recent exhibition, 'A Time and a Place:

Two centuries of Irish Social Life'. Top of her list though is the Natural History Museum . . .

"one of the few places in the centre of the city that remains almost exactly as it was 100 years ago." As for her love of fashion, it was not sparked by any "sudden epiphany", but dates from her childhood, which was "spent trailing around in old cocktail dresses, evening coats and various feather hats discovered in my grandmother's house."

And speaking of hats, Cullen has an exhibition in her sights. Provisionally entitled 'Hats: An Anthology', it's a collaboration with Stephen Jones, milliner to Gwen Stefani and Beyonce, as well as creator of Kylie's Showgirl tour headdress. "The exhibition will highlight the importance of hats within fashion and examine where they sit today. There was a difficult period for hats when they came off the radar and ended up as fossilized wedding pieces. But up until the 50s, people wore hats everyday. We tend to look back nowadays and think, 'my God, that's so unwieldy, ' but actually if you look at the really beautiful hats people were wearing, they were small, stylish and very easy to wear."

Cullen admits she's not a regular hat-wearer herself but says they are having a resurgence, "a lot of younger people are wearing hats . . . fashion students, within the day-time, it's very current." So, will the noughties be characterised as the decade of hats? "You can retrospectively put a look on everything. It's very easy to say, 'Oh the '70s, it was flares; '80s, shoulder pads; '90s, grunge.' But actually, when you look into it, there is a lot more to it."

"At the moment, the fashion system in itself is very interesting because you've had the rise and rise of the high street which has always been a British phenomenon but now is catching on globally. The speed with which designs are reproduced and available on the high street is staggering."

"But also, more and more, while things are coming back into fashion, less and less is going out of fashion. I suppose you could look at the '80s and lots of people were wearing skinny jeans . . . if you saw someone with flares, you'd break down in peals of laughter. But nowadays if you see someone in flares, or bootlegged jeans, or skinny jeans, it's not a gasp and an 'oh my God, you're so unfashionable'.

There is more of an acceptance of people looking towards their own style, an individualism, and less of an idea of the length of the season, the colour of the season."

Back to 'Fashion in Motion' and the talented Mr Pugh. "Fashion, " Cullen acknowledges, "works on a completely different timetable to a museum, and sometimes it's a case of two very different cultures coming together."

Gareth Pugh ended his 'Fashion in Motion' on a high with one of his rubber-suited models wearing a jacket that suddenly lit up in a blaze of white light. The audience responded appropriately, rising to their feet with loud cheers and claps. Backstage for Cullen and her team, it was slightly more stressful. "Working in a museum there are health and safety issues. We had to test the coat beforehand. We didn't want someone plugged into the mains and exploding live in front of everyone."

THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT

What: The world's greatest museum of art and design.
Where: Cromwell Road, London.
Nearest underground: South Kensington (District and Piccadilly lines).
When: Founded in 1857 to educate working people and inspire British designers and manufacturers.

>> Queen Victoria wanted to call the V&A the 'Albert Museum' in sole memory of her husband, an enthusiastic supporter of the Museum's mission.

>> The V&A owns a copy of the first commercially-produced Christmas card, which was invented in 1843 by the Museum's first Director, Henry Cole.

>> Queen Victoria was said to be shocked by the nudity of a full-size plaster-cast of Michelangelo's 'David'. A suitably proportioned fig leaf was made, and hung on the figure using a pair of hooks when dignitaries visited.

>> The tallest object in the collections is a plaster cast of Trajan's Column, reproduced from the marble original in Rome.

It is 35.6m high and, being too tall to fit in the galleries, is displayed as two separate towers.

>> The Ardabil carpet at the V&A is the world's oldest dated carpet (made in Iran in 1539) and one of the largest, most beautiful and historically important in the world.

>> Tippoo's Tiger has long been one of the V&A's most popular exhibits. The wooden model of a tiger attacking a European was made for Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore in India, in the 1790s. A mechanical organ inside imitates the growling of the tiger and the man's moans.

>> The V&A owns the famous 1963 Lewis Morley 'Scandal' photo of the Profumo Affair's Christine Keeler sitting naked astride an Arne Jacobsen style chair. It also owns the actual chair.

>> The Great Bed of Ware is Britain's most famous bed; made in the 1590s, it is mentioned in Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night'. At 11 feet square, it is the same size as the bed in the honeymoon suite at Hollywood's Beverly Hills Hotel.

>> In July 1972, the V&A became the first museum in Britain to present a rock concert. The concert was by British progressive folk-rock band Gryphon.

>> The museum employs a hawk, which is brought into the garden during the summer to discourage pigeons.

>> To celebrate its 150th anniversary, the V&A has commissioned 150 leading designers, architects, photographers, fashion designers and artists to contribute a page to an anniversary album.

The album is currently on display in the museum.