Overview
- The exhibition is now open at the Barbican Art Gallery in London through 25 January 2026, marking the venue’s first fashion show in seven years.
- Karen Van Godtsenhoven curates the exhibition, with Jon Astbury as assistant curator.
- Landmark works span Hussein Chalayan’s 1993 exhumed dresses, an Alexander McQueen Highland Rape piece, Issey Miyake’s 1998 Dragon: Explosion, and four Robert Wun FW23/SS23 looks including a wine-stained gown and burned silk.
- The design by Studio Dennis Vanderbroeck presents deliberately distressed surfaces, with some coverage noting scent elements while one review urged a fuller multisensory approach.
- Emerging and provocative practices are foregrounded through Michaela Stark’s body-morphing lingerie, Solitude Studio’s peat-marinated garments, Elena Velez’s mud-wrestling context, Paolo Carzana’s raw constructions, and Alice Potts’s sweat-grown crystals.