"Dirt is a way of bringing back an idea of realness, about disrupting a form of order and what we deem acceptable... Dirt can be anything that disrupts an ordered system." - Jon Astbury (Curator).
Fashion has definitely had a moment on this blog this year (here, here, here, here, and here), reflecting the growing interest in the artistry and craftsmanship of fashion designers whose skills are now being celebrated in major shows in museums and galleries. There will certainly be more to come in future posts. I was particularly interested in seeing this exhibition in which fashion designers abandon their usual pursuit of the glamorous, instead opting to deliberately subvert the gorgeous with a consciously dirty, grimey, stained aesthetic. Following on from their excellent art/textile exhibition Unravel last year (here), Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion at the Barbican Centre displays examples of designers embracing processes and techniques celebrating the beauty in decay and dirt in their garments. The show begins and ends with pairs of both her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and model Kate Moss's festival mud-caked wellington boots preserved in a vitrine demonstrating the egalitarian qualities of mud and dirt. The exhibition proper opens with a space given over to conceptual designer Hussein Chalalyan who in 1993 buried his own couture dresses with iron filings in a garden for three months. Exhumed, the dresses were reborn rusted with oxidised iron patterns giving them an ethereal, earthy beauty. This process of the burial and subsequent exhumation of garments would be taken up by other designers trying to achieve a certain soiled look or aesthetic. The next room looks at the work of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren who in 1983 presented their Nostalgia of Mud collection which at the time was the very opposite of 80s glamour. The phrase ‘nostalgia of mud’ was first coined by French playwright Émile Auger in 1855 and popularised by American writer Tom Wolfe in his 1970 article ‘Radical Chic’ for New York magazine. 'Nostalgia of mud’ describes a sensibility where those in industrialised societies want to be associated with the rural and rustic. In the 19th century, Parisian Bohemians – urban artistic types from educated and wealthy backgrounds – favoured ‘lived-in’ garments, which they believed spoke to worldly experience and a rejection of industrialisation. Wearing garments with faux or real dirt became a badge of honour for many. Another concept of the exhibition theme in the upper galleries explored by designers, is that of lived in or decaying evening gowns. Designers here recall Dickens' literary character Miss Havisham from his novel Great Expectations (1861) in which a grieving widow lives in her wedding gown in a decaying gothic mansion. A sense of ruin, dust and decay are evoked with fabrics that are aged and tattered, and others that resemble cobwebs. These creations allow for experimentation and display a heightened sense of craftsmanship from the designers with techniques such as faux patinas, deliberate shredding and burning, appliques and intricate embroideries. Part of this look has filtered through to mainstream fashion with the wearing of torn denim jeans. The imperfection of stains on clothing used to decorative ends or push boundaries of taste is also explored. Stains on clothing are usually viewed as shameful as the wearer fails to uphold standards of cleanliness. Designers here celebrate imperfections of sweat and red wine stains, bladder incontinence and burns from a hot iron in a subversive manner embracing the imperfections of these societal no-no's to decorative effect. Bio-designer Alice Potts uses human sweat to create wearable art, growing a delicate coating of crystals on dresses, bags, and shoes. Potts collects both her own sweat and the sweat of others, which is then filtered to remove external impurities and turned into a salt solution. Once absorbed by textile fibres, the solution begins to grow crystals over the course of several hours, which vary in appearance depending on the biological makeup of a person’s sweat. The use of bodily fluids in this way is seen as the last taboo in taste, or extremely tasteless depending on how easily offended you are. With fashion being one of the biggest polluting industries in the world, recycling was always going to be on the agenda in this exhibition. The ephemerality and recycling of materials is explored in the final gallery upstairs resulting in some quirky and outrageous outfits. Everything from discarded fabrics to cutlery, razor blades and household waste are transformed into glittering outlandish assemblages. The backdrop of the majority of the exhibition is made up of draped toile fabric which will be donated to London’s fashion schools after the show closes. There is a special sculptural display downstairs entitled After the Orgy by Copenagen-based brand Solitude Studios who similar to Chalayan and McQueen inter their fabrics/garments in local bogs. Of the display they state - ‘In contrast to the traditional Nordic bog findings, where all that remains is the organic body, we created these bog bodies in the image of the modern world’s weightlessness, remaining only as a shell of themselves, the clothes they wear.’ The display consists of their clothes arranged in a semi-erotic tableau of bog bodies suspended in the air. The exhibition is brimming with iconic fashion designers and was a first encounter personally with the designs of Robert Wun who has begun to make a name for himself in couture fashion with some very theatrical designs. Although most aren't to my taste it was good to see the sheer craftsmanship involved in his pieces at close quarters. The embroidery and sequin/beadwork was amazing on the piece with the black veil recreating the look of having been caught in a sowstorm. What was to my taste however, were the original designs of Alexander McQueen whom I have featured many times on this blog. It was a delight to see a delicate original dress from his controversial AW1995 Highland Rape collection, too fragile to be hung on a mannequin instead laid out in a glass vitrine like a sleeping beauty. The outfit that gave me perhaps most pleasure to examine first-hand was one from John Galliano's seminal last collection for Maison Martin Margiela from 2024. It was a fashion show full of spectacle and theatrics in which designer Galliano and make up artist Pat McGrath excelled in their artistry. The show threatened to break the internet such was the interest and acclaim the collection recieved from industry insiders and the general public alike on its showing. What was really interesting to see was the exemplary couture cutting, the pleating and fraying techniques combined with everyday utilitarian materials such as packing tape and corrugated card to stunning effect. Seeing an outfit from this fabled collection was an exquisite pleasure. Just one of many to be found in this amazing exhibition.
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