Don’t be deceived by Kate Moss’s Hunter wellies at the entrance. Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion showcases clothes that are deliberately distressed and filthy, and will come as a shock to anyone whose idea of a fashion exhibition involves glass vitrines and slick, ambient glamour, or the sort of wildly popular blockbusters put on (and paid for) by brands such as Dior and Chanel.
Perhaps because gloss is regarded as an integral element of luxury fashion, objects such as designer dirty trainers tend to infuriate people. There is only one pair at the Barbican’s first fashion exhibition in almost a decade. But the way Balenciaga’s £1,400 faux-filthy high tops came to be not just widely coveted, but objects that seemed to express the disconnect between high fashion and the real world, is at the heart of this exhibition which presumes that the problem is not fashion rending and besmirching its garments. It’s you for not understanding why that’s exciting.
