Haunting costume drama

When dress becomes "costume", does it become art? It's a question raised by Spectres. The other is, where do recurring themes of historical fashion come from: are they dark phantasmagoria, memories, bits of our souls?

No pretty chronological show of frocks this, but a clinical curation of a literal notion, with concept given precedence over the "active" ingredient - 70 edited outfits, from 1850 to now.

Enter a dark, stylised theatrical fairground-set of raw timber cut into palisades. Glimpse, through circular lenses, spectral white dresses on Stockman dummies, magnified into maggoty-looking lace and bows, or distanced into a white army of clothes.

See towering cartoon "historical" ladies' figures cut from plywood, with old ironwork screwed on as chatelaines.

Then watch three giant horizontal cogs purr round, throwing designer-outfits into striking references and echoes: Olivier Theyskens's leather bustled-dress tit-to-tit with Edwardian black bustle; a wooden Yoji Yamamoto dress a cog away from a paper Vandervorst one.

But the curation is controlled. The cogs lumber around, with the gearing fixed so that only permitted accidents happen. It is marshalled chaos.

The ranks of sad, threatening white dresses make horrible sense. Similarities and differences of cut span centuries; the mute female frailties of the clothes themselves defy linear interpretation in favour of fresh sideways ones.

While real fashion's utility still excludes it from being called art, curator Judith Clark's considered deconstructivism in Spectres, read as a whole, deserves the title.

Until 8 May. Information: 020 7942 2000.