Her cultural significance escapes many critics, but an exhibition devoted to Kylie Minogue is already breaking box office records at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Despite grumblings about dumbing down, more than 4,000 people have booked advance tickets for the show, which opens tomorrow - more than for any exhibition in the museum’s history.

Kylie - The Exhibition has something that previous V&A blockbuster appraisals of Leonardo Da Vinci, Modernism, Vivienne Westwood, the Arts and Crafts movement, Che Guevara, Versace, and Art Deco conspicuously lacked: a pair of very small gold lamé hotpants.

The latest temporary addition to the V&A’s treasure trove of priceless artefacts from 3,000 years of world culture occupy pride of place at the centre of the exhibition.

Widely cited as the garment that relaunched Minogue’s career after a long period in the doldrums in the 1990s, the pants are displayed in their own glass case, next to a detailed description of their provenance.

It relates the “legend” of how the photographer Katerina Jebb bought them for 50p at a flea market, how Minogue then wore them for a photo shoot and to a fancy dress party before discovering them at the back of her wardrobe the night before she shot the video to Spinning Around, the disco anthem that became her first British No 1 hit for ten years in 2000.

Janine Barrand, of the Arts Centre in Melbourne, where the exhibition was first staged, said that the shorts had become a cultural icon in their own right.

“For the public there’s a sense of mystery about them. We don’t know who designed them but they became so recognisable. It’s a real insight into performance: a sense of experimentation and trying new things that came together with a wonderful song in that video. The hotpants emerged as a symbol of that journey.”

They are part of an exhaustive attempt to catalogue the career of the Australian pop princess, through songs, videos, photographs, backstage notes, dressing room clutter, awards and, most of all, costumes.

The collection also includes the dungarees that Minogue wore to play Charlene, the tomboy mechanic in Neighbours in 1988, the hooded white jersey jumpsuit from the video to Can’t Get You Out of My Head in 2001 and the blue corset designed by John Galliano that she wore for her Showgirl tour in 2005, complete with lavishly feathered headdress and tail.

Exhibitions of memorabilia on this scale and devoted to a single performer are unusual, Ms Barrand said. “There is one to John Lennon at the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame [in Ohio] but it’s a bit more about the writing and the lyrics with him,” she said.

More than half a million people saw the exhibition in Australia and the organisers expect to exceed that figure after the exhibition has completed its four-month residence in London and toured to the Manchester Art Gallery and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow.

The V&A exhibition is free, but admittance is staggered at 15-minute intervals.

Minogue was expected to attend a party at the museum last night, her first public appearance since the break-up of her relationship with Olivier Martinez, the French actor.

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