It was one of the most legendary graduate collections London had ever seen. The year was 1993, and Hussein Chalayan was preparing to unveil The Tangent Flows, his final collection as a student at Central Saint Martins. But this was no ordinary graduate collection. Months earlier, Chalayan had buried his garments in a friend’s garden and had only just dug them up again. What emerged from the soil was exactly what you’d expect. The clothes were decayed, caked in dirt, and streaked with rust from the iron filings he had buried them with. The oxidisation had dyed the clothes that familiar shade of burnt orange. Chalayan put the garments straight onto the models, sending them down the runway in their decayed state. Overnight, he became one of London’s most innovative designers.

Now, the Barbican is dedicating an entire exhibition to fashion’s unique relationship with dirt and decay. Curated by Karen Van Godtsenhoven and Jon Astbury, Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion brings together over a hundred looks from the past half-century and features pieces from Vivienne Westwood, Issey Miyake and Maison Margiela, as well as a special focus on designers making waves today, such as Matty Bovan, Paolo Carzana, Dilara Findikoglu, and Louis Gabriel Nouchi.

Timing with the opening of Dirty Looks, we caught up with three designers whose work features in the show – Yaz XL, Solitude Studios, and Michaela Stark – to discuss their unique relationships with dirt and decay.

Where does your interest in the strange side of fashion come from?
“To be strange is innately in me and to play with clothes also, so it’s a little inescapable for me. McQueen, Galliano, CCP, Margiela. They paved the way.”

How can dirt and decay be sexy?
“To decay is to decompose and break apart. For me, that’s sexy in itself. The slow journey of something becoming less and less. When it comes to clothes, converting that tension of what area of the body is going to break through next is sexy. With decay and dirt also comes texture. My obsession with textures is automatic, but when I think on it deeper – texture conveys the passing of time and a journey. That reminder of my mortality gets me into a very grateful and passionate headspace.”

(Image represents the ‘before’ – the piece will rust throughout the exhibition, acting as a performance art live decay.)

Where did the idea of using bog-submerged fabrics come from?
“Sophia (co-creative director) grew up near a peat bog, and went to kindergarten in the woods next to the bog. Her kindergarten teachers always told stories about the elves washing their clothes in the bog, giving the water its unique colours. Years later, when we started experimenting with natural dyes, Sophia reminisced on this memory, wondering what would happen to the textiles in the bog. The results speak for themselves, and it has been a practice in almost every collection we have made. Sometimes more subtle than others.”

What draws you to this dirty, earthy aesthetic?
“It’s personal to us. As mentioned above, the bog has a unique place in our lives. And in general, we are very curious about the dynamic between nature and humans. Our practice was founded on this, and we have explored various themes reflecting upon this in our collections. Having worked a lot with literary nature, the external nature, this curiosity has naturally led us to, what we call, the ‘internal nature’. This means what goes on inside humans, utilising that point of view, instead of the opposite.

Our installation for the Barbican comes from an inspiration of Jean Baudrillard’s Transparency of Evil. Pondering the relation between human and nature, society and sociology is a given. And Baudrillard really sparked something in us. He describes modern Western society as transparent, without a shadow. In seek of absolute liberation, despite having already reached liberation. As the system of liberation transcends the freedom we connote it as – accelerating as its own orbit, without any reference to its starting point – the wish for freedom, or a better life, becomes the very thing that takes away that exact desired freedom.

Merging our interest in the bog and Baudrillard’s thoughts, we have created our installation work for the Barbican.

Below is an essential quote by Baudrillard from the chapter After the Orgy:

“Now everything has been liberated, the chips are down, and we find ourselves faced collectively with the big question: WHAT DO WE DO NOW THE ORGY IS OVER?

Now all we can do is simulate the orgy, simulate liberation.”

The notion of this chapter is that in modern society, liberated as we have become, everything feels as without weight, without a shadow. A sort of simulation. A state of post orgy; a state of post-liberation.

With this, we create the 2025 bog bodies in the image of the modern world’s weightlessness, remaining only as a shell of themselves, the clothes they wear. Standing in contrast to the traditional Nordic bog findings, where all that remains is the organic body.

The installation engages in an orgy, a state of seeking liberation and relief, but being asomatic in its modern existence, it is stripped from the weight of substance and feeling.

Positioned this way, the modern-day bog body, existing exclusively in its own reference, forever simulates the sexual act it once engaged truthfully in.”

Could you describe the pieces you’ll be exhibiting at Dirty Looks?
“For the Barbican Dirty Looks exhibition, I have made a Couture corset, a pair of panties and embroidered thigh-high stockings, which will each be framed and presented as artworks. I will also be exhibiting two self-portraits where I am wearing the framed garments. 

The entire concept of the Dirty Looks exhibition has inspired me so much, specifically the elements of desire and decay, so I wanted to create something that really honours that, and delve into the emotions those words bring up for me.

The corset is a completely new shape for me, but will still have a lot of my signature details; cinching the waist to an extreme and hip and bust cutouts so that the fat intentionally bulges out. 

It features handcrafted couture rope made in my London atelier, which cuts into the hips, creating a silhouette that resembles a caged pannier. The rope is designed to look as if it is breaking and barely holding on by a single thread, fragile and decayed, but strong enough to morph my body.

To go with the corset is a pair of very thin translucent thigh-high stockings. The stockings are delicately embroidered with lavender thread to resemble veins. The idea is to make the stockings look as if they have been worn, loved even, with ladders and holes, as well as dirt and debris. 

Finally, I made a couture pair of panties from very delicate silk, with distressed silk chiffon trimming. Drawstring runs through the centre of the panties, which is designed to emphasise my camel toe when pulled tight. I plan on leaving any body marks, stains, discharge, or wrinkles left on the panties after I wear them. These bodily marks will leave an essence of me behind, and become a part of the artwork. 

Each garment is embellished with century-old flower stamens, which is a decoration usually used by milliners to make their fabric flowers look more realistic. The flower stamens I will be using are now so old and fragile that they are starting to disintegrate, which I find so beautiful. 

I want each garment to have this sense of history and vulnerability. I want you to be able to feel the essence of the person who wore it, and the history of the cloth and embellishment. I want you to feel the love and care that went into each stitch, and imagine the hours that were spent creating the garment. I want the garments to have this haunting, almost visceral feeling from the decay, like it’s falling apart after being pulled so tightly over my skin.”

Desire and decay are two major concepts in the exhibition, how do you think your work responds to these concepts?
“The element of desire was something that I really sat with while coming up with this idea. I didn’t want it to be the obvious idea of desire that comes especially when designing lingerie. As an artist who shows my body in a certain way, that idea of sexual desire is put on me a lot, but desire for me is something so much more internal. When I put on a corset, or a panty, it’s more about creating this little fantasy moment for myself – I am living out my own desires to see myself in a certain way. Obviously, through my work, I take this to quite an extreme level, and physically mould and transform my body to take on almost unnatural shapes. It’s about my own intense desires to create beauty and meaning with my body, to use my body and clothing as a means to tell a story or express a very raw and honest emotion. This desire burns into me so deeply that I will force and mould myself into any shape to the point where the desire becomes pain, and then push it even further until desire can become danger. 

This is a feeling that will be portrayed in my self-portraits for the Dirty Looks, and hopefully carries through to the garments themselves. The self-portraits have yet to be created, so I want to leave that as open as possible to allow for my real emotion in the moment to take charge. I guess you’ll just have to wait until the exhibition opens to see!” 

Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion will run at the Barbican Art Gallery from 25th September 2025 – 25th January 2026