There are some fashion exhibition greats that live in my mind rent free. The 2015 Savage Beauty exhibition of Alexander McQueen’s life work at the V&A. Camp at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion at the Barbican is about to occupy the same mental real estate. It’s a mark of a truly great show when you want to immediately return, or simply never leave. If I could bunk down between the mannequins and stay the night I would.
Dirty Looks is a feast for the eyes and the mind. Curator Karen Van Godtsenhoven (who co-authored the exhibition catalog for Camp, incidentally), and assistant curator Jon Astbury (full disclosure, they’re a former colleague) have covered an impressive array of thought-provoking themes that you can linger with, or simply absorb by osmosis as you wonder at the archive pulls.
