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A long-overdue homage to the late queer icon Leigh Bowery, this exhibition at the Tate Modern does not disappoint. The exhibition covers most of Bowery’s lifetime, and includes his work, some of his possessions, and artwork of him. It’s loud, camp, vulgar- what some would call an eyesore. Exactly as Bowery would have wanted.
‘Leigh Bowery!’ is a totally immersive exhibition that Tate has gone all-out for. Walls in one room are covered in the same Star Trek wallpaper Bowery had in his flat, which he shared with close friend Trojan. Walls in another are painted red with huge silver circles, like an inverted recreation of Bowery’s iconic red spotted makeup. Videos and music overlap each other throughout the exhibition, creating a vibrant soundscape like inside the nightclubs Bowery spent his life in.
The exhibition truly honours Bowery, and portrays many elements of his life. He is lauded for his work as a designer, an artist, and a revolutionary queer figure, but he is also recognised as a human. Exhibition curators did not shy away from depicting the grit of Bowery’s life, be it in his letters denoting his sexual encounters, the half-naked images of his explicit performances, or even the direct recognition of the offensive nature of some of his work. Other belongings include Bowery’s music certificate and his Transport for London card- reminding viewers that Bowery was not just an artist, but a person too.
It seems a fitting time to spotlight Bowery- a queer icon who rejected social norms in a period of growing conservatism. A man who actively avoided doing things the ‘right’ way (see heels in clogs) and dismissed labels. Maybe Tate is calling for the next Bowery to emerge and provide us all with some sense of hope?
The ‘Leigh Bowery!’ exhibition runs at the Tate Modern from February 27 to August 31 2025.
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Chanel presented its Spring/Summer 2019 ready-to-wear collection on the runway on Tuesday. Guests including Vanessa Paradis and Pharrell Williams attended the show in Paris’s Grand Palais, which creative director Karl Lagerfeld transformed into a beach complete with sand and real waves. The collection boasted 86 looks which spoke to both the sophistication and the playfulness of Chanel’s brand identity.
Models adorned with layered pearl, gold and multicoloured necklaces strutted barefoot through the shallow water in time with the techno music, pastel-coloured mules or sandals in hand. A handful of pieces included scattered sparkly gold detailing, appearing to reference the sand. Though the collection was presented by the water, it contained a range of clothing styles, from sparkly evening wear to tweed suits to minidresses with retro prints.
Lagerfeld overtly referenced the label through the motifs of both the brand name and logo across many pieces. Gold necklaces, earrings and bracelets read ‘CHANEL’, as do shirt pockets and two-piece sets. Logos appear on earrings, dress fronts, straps, shoes, and handbags. This logo-centric approach to fashion design has become popular in recent seasons amongst brands including Gucci and Louis Vuitton.
Whilst this collection is frequently on-the-nose with its brand name, Lagerfeld also made sure to pay homage to the Chanel identity through its iconic design elements. Much of the collection included the classic Chanel tweed material, and there was no shortage of pearl necklaces.
Other notable elements of the collection include the lapis blue lace cover-ups, black sequinned evening wear, straw hats, and crossbody bags- the latter of which many models wore two.
Lagerfeld, through this collection, caters to both the Chanel woman and the Chanel girl. Whilst the Chanel girl ambles across the beach in a babydoll dress with her toes in the water, the Chanel woman slips into her heels and follows the wooden path.
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(Read on my Substack here)
Last week, I attended designer Kim Parr’s pop-up in her central London home. I had never heard her name, but I’m always open to being introduced to an independent designer’s work and getting a look behind the scenes of a fashion brand. Which is what I thought was happening.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the pop-up since I left, both positively and negatively. Either way, I have to give the marketing team behind Kim Parr credit for leaving a lasting impression on attendees.
(This article will be divided into two sections, in case you’re reading this and already know about Kim Parr and the pop-up. I’ll outline what happened first, then give you my thoughts in the second section. I’d also love to hear other people’s thoughts if you have anything to add!)
The event
Having been handed only the invitation pictured below, I had next to no information about who Kim Parr was or what I could expect from this pop-up. From my research I could find just one underdeveloped website (kimparr.com) on the designer, which gave me hardly any more information.
However, as a bored student with free time and curiosity, I turned up to the 3:30pm slot. I was welcomed into a beautiful house by a team of staff members, who quickly offered to take my bag or give me a refrigerated kombucha. The marble counters in the kitchen were topped with fruits and pastries, which we were free to take as well. Any concerns that I had previously had about the fact that I was entering a total stranger’s home were quickly dispelled.
We were guided through a series of rooms introducing us to the Kim Parr brand, the first containing a desk overflowing with fashion books annotated with sticky notes. In this room, a Buyer spoke to her small audience of attendees about her working process, and the priorities of a Kim Parr Buyer: durability, versatility, and accommodating wearers’ needs. The next room held shelves upon shelves of more fashion books, a desk, and a crowded pinboard of inspiration images and sketches. The speaker in this room, a Designer, shared a similar message of Kim Parr’s biggest priorities, and how this collection largely utilises natural materials including linen and merino wool.
Next, a showroom, displaying a few pieces from the newest collection. All quite simple, with solid earth-tone colours. I could imagine some of the pieces not being the most flattering on the body, but I could excuse it because they mostly seemed well-constructed (although I am far from an expert) and were made mostly from natural materials, with many pieces being 100% linen. At this point, I would have assumed that most pieces were around £100 or so each.
The next room was where the real surprise came. One-by-one, guests were invited into a dark space, with a mirror with a screen in front of it. Slowly, the words ‘Kim Parr’ transformed to reveal their anagram (see below images, ignore the blurriness…).Yes, Primark. Every piece we had just seen was taken from the new ‘The Edit’ collection, which launched on Monday.
If you haven’t heard of Primark, it’s a multinational fast fashion retailer, which, aside from its history of human rights abuses and use of child labour in factories, is known for ultra-low prices and a chaotic store environment.
The complete collection was displayed in the final room, presented by some of the higher-ups at Primark. They revealed that this pop-up had been intended to challenge people’s preconceptions of the brand, and encourage people to see their products as good-quality by demonstrating how people perceive the clothes differently in a different context.
Most pieces were priced between £10-25, with accompanying jewellery costing less than £10 per piece.
My thoughts
Firstly, I want to clarify that I will never criticise a brand’s choice to improve their quality and shift away from synthetics to natural materials. I absolutely applaud Primark for this choice, which they’ve been implementing for a while now. I also think that for customers who are primarily concerned with purchasing natural materials over synthetic ones, this would be successful.
I did try to ask the member of staff (whose name I cannot recall) who worked in the fabric/materials section of the brand about how Primark had managed to absorb so much of the cost of utilising natural materials. I was met with a basic explanation of economies of scale. Speaking to another member of staff about how intrigued I was about this, she remarked something along the lines of ‘Isn’t it amazing?’. Needless to say, I didn’t get a comprehensive answer.
These responses regarding the cost of materials reflect what I thought was a wider problem within the pop-up, and which the Primark brand has a history of: a lack of transparency. It was revealed that the ‘Buyer’ and ‘Designer’ that we had met earlier on were in fact actors. I question why Primark didn’t choose to use members of their own Buying and Design teams and simply ask them to pretend that they were working for the much smaller Kim Parr brand. Had this been the case, customers would still have been able to learn a little bit about the brand’s ethos and how choices are made behind-the-scenes. Customers might then have been able to reflect and truly see Primark in a different light.
As it stands, though, I have dismissed everything the ‘Buyer’ and ‘Designer’ had said, as I know it was all a script handed to them by Primark.
Nonetheless, I do think that this was successful in proving that Primark clothing is higher quality than its reputation suggests. I considered most of the pieces to be relatively well-made, and worth significantly more when I first saw them and wasn’t aware that they were Primark pieces.
Personally, though, this didn’t make me want to shop at Primark so much as it made me want to criticise the quality of high-end clothing. The event forced me to reflect on how the environment that I experience clothing in affects how I perceive the clothing. In a more luxurious space with limited quantity, I tend to perceive clothing as relatively high-quality.
Maybe, then, I’ve been giving high-end brands too much grace. Is that Louis Vuitton dress really that well made, or is it the fact that I was greeted by a display of a mannequin driving a Louis Vuitton-branded car, or that I feel a sense of exclusivity because there’s practically a maximum of one piece in every square meter of the store? Or maybe the fact that a welcoming staff member offered me a drink to accompany my shopping experience?
I am curious to see if Primark purchases do increase following this event. I would imagine there is a significant consumer base who are primarily looking for durable clothes and/or natural fibres, and may not view Primark as fulfilling these criteria, but might consider it more if they were to go through the Kim Parr experience.
Personally, I’m not convinced I’ll become a regular Primark shopper. What I will be doing is entering every shop with a keener eye and a more skeptical attitude.
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As I reach for my phone to let my interviewee know I’ve arrived, I hear his familiar shouting above me. Neville Wilding, post-punk and rock artist, and ex-member of The Fall, has his head out the window and is beckoning me in. He’s wearing a black denim button-up and a pair of loose-fitting black jeans – “’cause I’ve only got one arm, I’m putting loose things on”. He informs me that his other hand was broken a few nights before, after a bottle of gin for breakfast. Nev might be considered the embodiment of rock and roll.
Having worked as an artist for almost forty years, Wilding has been immersed in the London rock subculture for most of his life, and he’s agreed to chat with me about his experience in it. For Nev, his involvement in subculture has meant having close friends, co-workers, and roommates who are all part of a larger community of artists.
Looking around Wilding’s apartment, I notice signs of how central the scene has been to his life – decorations consist of old concert posters and guitars. He points out a Motörhead t-shirt hanging with his clothing – a gift from his close friend, a guitarist in the band.
“Even though I felt like I’d just dropped from Mars coming from Wales, just the imagination around me… it was just enlightening and just really set your blood on fire.” Nev’s move in the late 80s introduced him to a huge community of creatives, vastly different to his small-town childhood. He recalls one moment marking his immersion into the London rock scene – a show called Nux Vomica, which he performed in. “Basically it was about all different avant-garde artists, and there’s about 20 stages”. Traffic-light-style timers dictated how long each artist performed;once your light goes red, it’s time for the next artist to perform. “There was some crazy weird s**t that went on there.” From that moment on, there was no doubt that Wilding’s home was in the London music scene, and it still is today.
Whilst the internet claims that the subculture is dying out, Nev argues that it’s thriving now as much as ever – just in a different way. “It all used to be – you know, let’s say for example you were a teddy boy, you were a rocker, you were a mod, you were a punk, you were a new wave whatever, whatever, whatever. That doesn’t exist anymore, because everyone’s into everything… Obviously there was a lot more clarity to your club or to your gang, but the inclusion nowadays is fantastic… The strong identity, it was great at the time, and it was for that time.”
Nev’s music and fashion have always undeniably shaped one another. Though he doesn’t advertise himself as particularly concerned with fashion, I learn through our conversation how important it has been to him. “You will see the correlation between the music I’m writing and the clothes that I’m wearing. When I was like 13-17, I was doing all the folk clubs, and I used to look like Fagin (a Charles Dickens character) or something. Like a top hat, tails, and I was very Victorian, and my music was very Victorian… I used to busk with [that top hat] all the time. I’ve got much more bluesy and rootsy [in my music], and my clothes have got more trad and basic. I used to be very flamboyant, and the music was a lot more flamboyant… The clothes when [my music] was more avant-garde were much more avant-garde as well.”
Even off-stage, Nev’s fashion has reflected the same creativity he exhibits in his music. “I never had normal shoes for probably, like, 30 years. They were all like clown boots or something weird.I knew [a] guy [who said] Nev, you’re gonna f*****g love these boots. They were Dr Martens, and this was probably like ’86 or ’87, and they were see-through Dr Martens… and so I could just change my socks every day and everyone just thought I was wearing different boots.”
Through his relationships with fashion designers, with whom he shares his rebellious and creative nature, fashion has formed an undeniable presence in Wilding’s life. Wilding tells me about his friend’s S&M brand, Skin Two, which he frequently donned on stage during his time in an electronic-dance band. To describe the band’s Skin Two costumes as provocative is an understatement- for some shows, he tells me how his fellow performers were accessorised with cones of shame and leashes as they harmonised with him. Nev knows, the key role clothing plays in inciting a strong reaction.
He says his favourite designer, though, is Alexander McQueen.
“I did a song for Alexander McQueen, and he was always my fashion god. And so to meet him and write a song for him, for one of his shows, was pretty special… He used to work and hang out, where I used to hang out, so we chatted and he liked The Fall… So I wrote this song called “The Chain”, and it was about as murky as you could get, but it never came to pass because blah blah blah. But yeah, Alexander McQueen, probably about 3,000 feet higher than [any other designer] in my estimation.
You watch that swift cut [in the tailoring] and you’re like ‘f**k off how’d you do that?’… you’re, like, mesmerised… But also, I liked [McQueen] because he was a crazy decadent lunatic as well - and he liked my band, which helped. I loved Lee. Lee was f*****g top.”
Rock might not immediately strike audiences as fashion-forward, but as this conversation revealed, fashion has and will always be central to music, regardless of genre. Wilding, like many great artists, has found an appreciation of, and a power in, dress.
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For Chai T Grande, practicing drag began as a means of self-expression and escape during lockdown. Since then, the art has catapulted her into the spotlight through her recent participation in RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, and drag has since become her full-time career. I’m here to speak with her about the evolution of her relationship with drag, and what it means to be a drag queen in London in 2026 amidst an increasingly unaccepting political climate.
“What really pushed me to [start doing drag] was the weird luxury of having so much time on our hands - specifically time at home. I have always loved performances, I go to drag shows, I love fashion, I love talking to people and meeting people. I had all these different puzzle pieces… and before then I had never thought, when you put them all together, what does that look like? And it was drag.”
Not only does drag provide an intersection of Chai’s varied interests, it also acts as a vessel for connection with her Thai heritage. “I definitely grew up thinking that being Asian was not desirable, because of the conversations in the world around me, and that’s why I now go hard with adopting my culture through my drag… for years as a kid I didn’t celebrate it, and I want to kind of make up for lost time”. Some of her biggest style inspiration for her drag comes from East Asian women in popular culture, from Devon Aoki and Lucy Liu to XG and Lisa.
As a second-generation immigrant queen of Thai descent, the protection of immigrants and people of colour is a matter particularly close to her heart. Though Chai doesn’t view her drag as explicitly political, she agrees that the nature of drag is inherently political, and that people with a platform have an obligation to speak out about what they think is right. A manifestation of this was a group photoshoot that she participated in last summer, organised by Tia Kofi, a fellow RuPaul’s Drag Race UK queen . At a time where the St George’s flag was being used as a symbol of hate and exclusion, the group of POC drag queens came together dressed head-to-toe in red and white, reclaiming the flag. “I’ve always found so much power and pride in flags… and the St. George’s flag and the Union Jack are just as much mine as they are anyone else’s.”
Chai emphasises the importance of safe spaces for and by queer people, especially queer people of colour. Recently, she performed at a family-friendly K-pop cabaret show, hosted by a queer Asian cabaret collective. “There were drag kings, drag queens, trans people, all the above, and that’s beautiful. That’s exactly what kids should be exposed to. They’re working out who they are, and if they can see people that represent a whole spectrum, it will just make that a little bit less difficult for them when they’re making these decisions [about who they are]”.
However, sometimes the hatred, that queer safe spaces aim to protect people from, seeps in, as happened at this particular event. “I had noticed a group of mothers kind of giving me weird looks, but I didn’t think anything of it. But about halfway through the show, they stood up and were shouting at the host on stage, ‘You’re all disgusting’, ‘This is not what we signed up for’, ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves’. Thank goodness the host navigated it, and the venue quickly ushered them out, because that kind of language in front of children is so dangerous. That learned behaviour is then instilled in the next generation.”
Whilst drag is a personal haven for Chai, her peers, and her audiences, it does not exist within a vacuum. Vibrant queer nightlife lives in the corners of a bleak, increasingly intolerant world, in a chillingly Cabaret-esque way. Chai still doesn’t get public transport alone, and frequently has to consider what her best options are for getting ready and arriving at a venue with the least risk. “By the time I arrive at the venue I’m often quite highly strung, or not really in the best state of mind to be performing”.
But external tension and potential backlash should not stop people from engaging in drag, Chai asserts. Drag is an empowering form of art with a strong, welcoming community, but also is in itself an act of resistance. “When the voices of oppression are most strong, the voice of resistance has to be even stronger”.
REVIEWS
FASHION NEWS
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Fair Wear Foundation, a Dutch non-profit organisation, is set to begin a project this Autumn to aid the protection of female garment workers. This will take place in Bangladesh and southern India. The project will enforce existing workers’ protection laws, which have been largely neglected in garment factories.
Fair Wear Foundation has announced that it will focus on labour monitoring systems to enforce compliance with existing laws in both countries. The organisation will also focus on improving relationships between workers, export-oriented factories, and the companies who source products from them. Whilst the exact methods and systems are currently unclear, the foundation has indicated a high likelihood of success due to the many organisations investing in the project.
The need for projects like this one has become clear. 90% of garment factory workers are women, and yet most women in these garment factories are not protected. Recent research has found that 60% of women in the garment industry have suffered harassment or abuse.
Erica Van Doorn, director of Fair Wear Foundation, has stated that the enforcement of existing laws to protect women is both “an issue of respect for fundamental human rights” and “will give [factories] a competitive advantage in the international marketplace”.
Fair Wear Foundation is a Dutch non-profit organisation dedicated to the protection of garment workers in their 70 member companies. These member companies represent around 100 brands, with their products sold in 20,000 outlets in over 70 countries.
This project is possible due to the grant awarded by the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. The UN Trust Fund has granted over USD $78 million since 1997 towards projects aiding women.
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Up-and-coming fashion design students globally have been invited to participate in the unique new “Music Meets Fashion Competition”. Created by the British Fashion Council in collaboration with River Island and sportswear brand ICEBERG, the competition combines music, fashion, and sustainability. The launch was announced today at London Fashion Week.
Participants will create ‘sustainable’ garments that are in some way inspired by MTV. Their work will be judged by a big-name panel including Caroline Rush, the Chief Executive Director of the British Fashion Council, and James Long, ICEBERG’s Creative Director. Five finalists will be selected.
All five finalists will receive the priceless award of presenting their pieces at London Fashion Week Men’s in June, as well as £1000 from MTV for the necessary samples. The first-place winner will exhibit their ready-to-wear pieces on the runway at London Fashion Week in September, alongside other incredible opportunities. They will gain work experience with ICEBERG at Milan Fashion Week, have one year of their design tuition fees paid for by MTV, and have their designs sold by River Island both in-store and online.
This partnership between MTV and the British Fashion Council reflects how music and fashion have been intertwined for decades- think Madonna, Lady Gaga, or David Bowie. Kerry Taylor, Executive Vice President of Youth and Entertainment at ViacomCBS Networks International (the company which owns and oversees MTV) explained that “fashion is one of the many ways fans connect with our brand.”
The Music Meets Fashion Competition is an extremely unique and exciting opportunity for budding designers, but also for all the companies involved.
Stay tuned to learn more about the competition, who you’ll be seeing at Fashion Weeks, and what pieces you might soon get your hands on from River Island.