Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion

Featuring work by iconic designers, essays by acclaimed writers, and an extensive photographic portfolio, Dirty Looks examines the ways in which decay, waste, and sustainability play out in contemporary 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. From garments that elevate stains and wornness into ornament, to clothing submerged in bogs or created by transforming fashion waste, the works presented here challenge established notions of taste, beauty, and luxury, suggesting new pathways for fashion's future.

This richly illustrated anthology features new essays by influential voices in contemporary fashion, including Caroline Evans, Akiko Fukai, Lou Stoppard, and Sara Arnold. Their writing spans decolonial critique, feminist resistance, fashion's environmental cost, and the tension between bodily intimacy and public display. Alongside these texts, an extensive photographic portfolio by Ellen Sampson captures iconic garments that embody the project's themes in sharp, forensic detail. Featured designers include Vivienne Westwood, Hussein Chalayan, Comme des Garcons, Issey Miyake, Alexander McQueen, Maison Margiela, and many more.

Dirty Looks offers a timely lens through which to examine fashion's role in a world shaped by ecological crisis, cultural reckoning, and shifting aesthetic values. It invites readers to reconsider the narratives that define what we wear - and why.

Co-published with the Barbican

Contributor: Jon Astbury (Edited by), Karen Van Godtsenhoven (Edited by)

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