I was lucky enough to secure a ticket for the last day of Barbican’s captivating exhibition “Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion” on Jan. 25. Curated by Karen Van Godtsenhoven and Jon Astbury, the exhibition featured designers like Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, and Hussein Chalayan. I had absolutely no expectations going in, having only recently heard about the exhibition on TikTok and knowing almost nothing about fashion. Yet, I was pleasantly surprised by its detail and the intriguing, socially relevant designs it presented.

The exhibition, as the name suggests, displayed everything dirty, disgusting, and decaying. The introduction to the exhibition stated that fashion was traditionally seen as exclusively glamorous and perfect, but that over the past 50 years, there has been a significant increase in “dirt” within the industry, characterised by anthropologist Mary Douglas as “matter out of place”. This exhibition aimed to demonstrate how “dirt” in fashion was used to symbolize rebelliousness and political critique, romanticism, spirituality, and decay.

The exhibition itself was definitely larger than I expected. It consisted of two floors, and every time I thought we were almost done, we were pointed by signs to an entirely new hallway full of differently themed rooms. At the beginning of the exhibition, a worker provided each guest with the thick pamphlet of the exhibition guide, describing each room and giving details on the pieces on display, which I greatly appreciated. Without the pamphlet, the experience would have been vastly different, as I often found myself looking at a piece, and promptly reading a short paragraph about it which helped me understand the context surrounding its importance.

The pamphlet guided us into different themed rooms, like the “Nostalgia of Mud”, “Stains as Orbit”, and "Glittering Debris”, in which there would be a short introduction as well as numbered pieces on display ranging from elaborate dresses, shirts, and jackets to photographs and videos. This mix of media made the entire experience highly interactive and enjoyable. For example, there was a short five-minute excerpt from a short documentary called “Dirty Girls” directed by Michael Lucid that a crowd, including me, was gathered around curiously watching. The documentary involved Lucid, then a high school senior, documenting a group of 8th-grade girls known for their “crass behaviour and allegedly bad hygiene”. More specifically, it showed how many people, mainly girls, were so offended and appalled by a group of 13-year-olds who dared to ignore the typical societal standards.

Pieces from DI PETSA in the room, “Leaky Bodies”, originally part of the collection, “My Body is a Labyrinth". (Photograph by Mayada Abuhaleeqa)

The video was part of the larger themed room that I found particularly interesting, “Leaky Bodies”. This room shed light on bodily fluids and how they are displayed in fashion, often seen as one of the most taboo topics in the industry that prioritizes perfection and shames the more messy aspects of our “imperfect” bodies. The room had multiple dresses, shirts, pants, and more, that were covered in artificial stains that refer to the bodily fluids we often like to pretend do not exist: sweat, blood (more specifically, period blood), urine, breast milk, among others. Wet wedding dresses were displayed to allude to the nude body underneath and symbolize the feminine body’s historical association with virginity and purity in opposition to dirt, seen as unholy and impure, as recognized by Mary Douglas as well.

On the topic of the endless expectations placed upon women, London-based artist Michaela Stark’s self-portraits also caught my eye. She focused on societally deemed “imperfections” of the female body by photographing herself with her flesh bulging out of structured corset boning and ropes to critique the role of shapewear as a way to restrain the body. Answering an interview question by Hero Magazine about her work’s relation to the two central concepts of the exhibition, desire and decay, she explains how she used her body and clothing to showcase her desire to tell a story and make meaning of “a very raw and honest emotion”: “This desire burns into me so deeply that I will force and mold myself into any shape to the point where the desire becomes pain, and then push it even further until desire can become danger”.

What I highly appreciated about this exhibition is that it did not shy away from acknowledging the more problematic aspects of the fashion industry. On just the second page of the pamphlet, it was recognized that despite the meaningful nature of fashion, it is also the third most polluting industry in the world, and that by examining the “dirty look” in fashion, we might be able to criticize our relationship with the Earth and try to save it from the effects of human activities. The ninth room of the exhibition, “Fashioning Excess,” acknowledged the waste produced by the industry through overproduction and consumption. The introduction to the room highlighted how countries like Kenya, Ghana, and Chile experience “waste colonialism” through the permanent effects of trash sent there from the USA, Europe, and China. The room featured pieces by designers who repurposed discarded materials and excess fabrics to subvert the norm of overconsumption.

Displays from the room, “Fashioning Excess” with pieces by TRASHY Clothing on the far left. (Photograph by Mayada Abuhaleeqa)

I was also pleasantly surprised by the diversity of the designers featured and their intentions in their work. For example, the exhibition featured pieces from the Jordan-based Palestinian brand, TRASHY Clothing, and their Autumn/Winter 2025 collection, “Humiliation Rituals”. Made from upcycled deadstock fabrics and custom prints, the clothing addresses “geopolitical tensions and the occupation of Palestinian land” by exposing the humiliation of attempted control, order, and power. Another brand, IAMISIGO, founded by Nigerian designer Bubi Ogisi, used different natural materials to shed light on African culture and spirituality in precolonial times. In one of her collections displayed, “Chasing Evil”, she used bright colours and forms to reference ‘la sape’, Congolese Sapeurs who used clothes to “out-dress their oppressors as an act of resistance” in response to Congo’s colonial exploitation.

Piece #2 from the room, “Spectres of Dirt”, by John Galliano for Christian Dior. (Photography by Mayada Abuhaleeqa)

The exhibition also featured more controversial pieces, allowing the audience to form their own opinions. For example, it displayed a piece from John Galliano’s designs for Christian Dior’s Haute Couture Spring/Summer collection in 2000. The dress, as Galliano describes it, was inspired by homeless people he had seen sleeping along the Seine, which is why he incorporated elements such as frayed fabrics, reused items, and newspaper clippings. He claimed that the collection was made to show how “a tiara made of candy wrappers is as valuable as one made of diamonds,” yet he has also been widely criticized for romanticizing poverty, which I definitely agree with. Ultimately, high fashion has always been made for the rich by the rich. Pretending otherwise, by taking inspiration from the homeless to design clothes for a luxury brand like Dior, seems unbelievably out of touch at best and carelessly classist at worst.

Having been previously exposed only to ripped denim jeans as the highlight of “dirty” fashion, the exhibition truly revealed to me a side of the industry I had never seen before. “Dirty Looks” allowed me to see the beauty in what society perceives as the flaws and filth of our Earth and bodies, while still leaving plenty of room for both designers and audiences to criticize and rebel against norms and pressures. It has truly been one of my favourite experiences in London so far, and I am excited to follow the future releases from the featured brands and artists in their unique interpretations of fashion.