Hussein Chalayan & Karen Van Godtsenhove: 'Dirty Looks' [Talk & book signing]

Celebrating the publication and opening of Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion, the Barbican will be hosting a discussion between designer Hussein Chalayan and curator Karen Van Godtsenhoven.

Hussein Chalayan’s pioneering oeuvre anchors the exhibition’s narrative about the ruin and regeneration in fashion. His buried garments – a practice which began in his Central Saint Martins graduation collection The Tangent Flows (1993) and evolved through later collections – are potent expressions of fashion’s life cycles, representing what he considers a form of ‘future archaeology’.

Tickets here.

Friday 26 September
19:00 

Frobisher Auditorium 1
Silk St, Barbican 
London EC2Y 8DS
United Kingdom 

About Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion

Scratching beneath fashion’s glossy surface, Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion reveals the rich and varied ways in which fashion has harnessed the playful, radical, and regenerative potentials of dirt and waste as signifiers of rebellion, authenticity, and desirability. Various forms of dirt – organic as well as man-made – have emerged as vital sources of material innovation and artistic expression in a fashion landscape increasingly shaped by waste, climate emergency, and labour injustice. 

Can't make the event? Purchase a copy of the book here.