SHOWStudio’s Lou Stoppard and academic Adam Murray have joined together to co-curate a new exhibition, North: Identity, Photography, Fashion, which opens this week at Somerset House, having transferred from the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool.

The exhibition brings together designers, fashion photographers and artists, with contributors that include Raf Simons, Jamie Hawkesworth, Glen Luchford and Turner-prize winning artist Mark Leckey. At the crux of the exhibition is a desire to explore the mythology around the North and its culture, decodifying the traditional narrative around the region and instead investigating how it has really influenced contemporary style.

In a post-Brexit era, the exhibition is both timely and surprisingly overdue. As Adam Murray notes in his essay ‘The Constructed North‘, since Agyness Deyn’s rise to stardom in 2008, ideas of the North have long inspired and informed the zeitgeist. However the personal, more visceral experience of the area and its influence has yet to have been investigated – until now.

North: Identity, Photography, Fashion is at Somerset House until 4th February 2018. 

All images courtesy of Open Eye Gallery.

Tags: Lou Stoppard, North, SHOWstudio

Whether it’s designers, photographers, stylists or artists, fashion is full of dynamic creatives who come together, in pairs and in teams, to produce emotional, meaningful images. But occasionally there are partnerships that stand out and endure beyond the whirring cycle of the industry, and it is these notable and lasting collaborations that Lou Stoppard has chosen to spotlight on in her latest book, Fashion Together.

The book consists of 18 interviews between creative duos across fashion, design, photography and film. Highlights include Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin’s portrait of Clint Eastwood for the New York Times Magazine (2005) and Shaun Leane for Alexander McQueen’s ‘Star’ headpiece from the Salem Collection (Autumn/Winter 2007), as well as conversations with Marc Jacobs, Rick Owens, Vivienne Westwood, Nick Knight and their creative partners. Conversations range from childhood memories to thoughts on the fashion industry, and a foreword from The Met’s Andrew Bolton provides the perfect means of entering these worlds.

Ahead of the launch of the book, Fashion Space Gallery will celebrate the collaborative spirit with a new exhibition opening this week. As an insight into the industry, and the minds behind the makers, this new book provides a warm, engaging presentation of some of fashion’s most enduring and memorable partnerships.

Fashion Together opens at London’s Fashion Space Gallery, 8th September 2017 and ‘Fashion Together: Fashion’s Most Extraordinary Duos on the Art of Collaboration’ is released on Rizzoli Press, October 17th. 

Photo credit: Backstage at the Alexander McQueen ‘Black’ show, June 2004. Aluminium Coiled Corset by Shaun Leane for Alexander McQueen, The Overlook, Autumn/Winter 1999 | Courtesy of the Shaun Leane archive

Tags: Fashion, Lou Stoppard

You don’t have to have Instagrammed Corrine Day’s iconic Kate Moss shoot for The Face to know that youth culture has shimmied around fashion’s dance-floor since time began, throwing shapes and intoxicating every wisened creative as it went. Whilst Joan Didion for Celine may have piqued an interest for a mature, savvy model, really it’s the arresting, intangible power of youth that continues to enthrall the industry. From Friday, London College of Fashion will celebrate this preoccupation in an all-star exhibition Mad About The Boy at the Fashion Space Gallery.

With a timely opening on the first day of London Collections: Men, Mad About The Boy promises to cast a discerning spotlight on the relationship between fashion and beautiful males. If the subject alone didn’t have you intrigued, the fact that it’s curated by SHOWstudio’s Lou Stoppard definitely will.

Thanks to contributions from game-changing designers and creatives such as Raf Simons, J W Anderson, Nick Knight, Meadham Kirchhoff and Larry Clark, the exhibition is set to continue last year’s legacy of mixing fashion and art (did you already forget about McQueen mania?), to great effect. Attendees can expect a sensory experience thanks to audio recordings of designers and photographers discussing their memories alongside editorials, films and select looks from seminal collections.

You’d be mad not to visit.

Open 11th January – 2nd April.

fashionspacegallery.com

Tags: J.W. Anderson, LC:M, Lou Stoppard, Meadham Kirchhoff, Nick Knight, Raf Simons, SHOWstudio