Overview

• The 4.5-metre, four-panel portrait by Samuel Hodge premiered on July 25 at the National Portrait Gallery and is now open for public viewing.
• Hodge assembled hundreds of photographs spanning Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales’s 20-year collaboration and applied paint and dye to create his largest framed work to date.
• The portrait commission began in January when Romance Was Born enlisted Hodge to craft a layered tribute using archival images and multimedia techniques.
• Romance Was Born’s narrative-rich, upcycled designs are held in institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and have been worn by figures from Björk to Cate Blanchett.
• Gallery director Bree Pickering hailed the installation as an unconventional celebration of fashion as art and a landmark moment for the designers’ cultural recognition.