February 25, 2026

Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion

Once a backstage blemish, dirt now takes centre stage and the Barbican’s “Dirty Looks” exhibition pushes the conversation further.

“Dirty Looks : Desire and Decay in Fashion” is the kind of exhibition we’re likely to remember for a very long time. A breathtaking curation of over sixty designers, bringing together major fashion houses and emerging talents fresh out of the renowned college Central Saint Martins classrooms.

Words by Tova Bach

Left; (left) Andrew Groves, Cocaine Nights, SS199 (right) Ronald van der Kemp, Nikita, Let the Sun Shine In, Haute Couture SS2025, Right; (left) Miguel Adrover, Birds of Freedom, MeetEast AW 2001 (right) Alexander McQueen, Eshu, AW 2000

For its first fashion exhibition in nearly a decade, the Barbican offers an ode to non-conformist beauty. Haute Couture pieces that have marked fashion history are placed on scuffed platforms or surrounded by grimy tiled walls, some with tiles missing altogether. A display that deliberately reinforces a sense of neglect. But what is it about decay that makes fashion so desirable?

Above; Di Petsa, My Body is a Labyrinth, SS 2025

Targeting mass production

Speaking to Dazed, co-curator Karen Van Godtsenhoven explained: “Dirty clothing is still used to confront taboos and empower its wearers.” Beyond provocation, the exhibition foregrounds a fashion that challenges the ideals of polished, over-curated and mass-produced beauty: a countercurrent to genuine, natural aesthetics.

Above; Hussein Chalayan, Map Reading, AW 2001

It also becomes a way of addressing environmental preservation within an unstoppable, hyper-polluting industry that continues to fuel consumption. And while audiences are now well aware of these issues, how can we keep discussing sustainability without repeating the same weary narrative? “Instead, we focused on how designers grapple with cycles of life and regeneration,” Van Godtsenhoven told British Vogue. “For younger designers, the urgency is sharper: they graduate into an oversaturated industry and wonder: ‘What’s left to make? What is possible now?’”

This perspective unfolds through multiple lenses, gaining its full resonance in the penultimate room, where Kôsai Sekine’s film “Dust to Dust” is projected. Travelling from Nairobi to Tokyo to Paris, the film follows Haute Couture designer Yuima Nakazato and questions the responsibility designers bear in the face of fashion’s ecological collapse.

Left; Iamisigo (left) Shadows, SS2024 (right) SHE (Supreme Higher Entity) SS2020, Right; Maison Margiela, Women Collection AW 2006

Dirt as natural beauty

In exploring a reconnection to the earth, the Barbican highlights the expression “Nostalgia of the Mud.” Coined in 1855 by French playwright Émile Augier, it describes a sensibility drawing industrialised societies’ people towards rurality and rusticity – or labelled “primitive” by modernity and colonialism.

Above; Paolo Carzana

In 1982, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood revived the term to portray dirt as a symbol of a more authentic, nature-respecting way of life. Today, however, this nostalgia is often channelled through evocations of natural landscapes and folkloric motifs, seen as an act of rebellion against mass-produced fashion. Yet returning to the mud becomes slightly ironic when faced with the rain-soaked festival wellies worn by Kate Moss at Glastonbury in 2000.

At the same time, the display turns its attention to everything that makes us human. The marks we are encouraged to erase in the name of immaculate, controlled perfection. These natural traces of a lived body, presented here as ornaments, challenge our discomfort. Stains – from sweat to tomato sauce and red wine – become aesthetic elements in their own right. In questioning our obsession with uniformity, the exhibition deliberately embraces scuffs and smears. This is particularly striking in The Wine Stain Gown, Fear by Robert Wun (Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2023), a sumptuous white gown splashed with red wine and paired with a hat set with deep brown gemstones.

The exhibition also raises the question of who is afforded the privilege of being allowed to get dirty, contrasting intentional grime as an artistic statement with the kind of dirt that burdens the lives of ordinary people. Dirt and decay appear as symbols of rebellion and authenticity, recalling the hippies of the 1960s, the punks of the 1970s and the rise of bohemian culture in the 1990s. These movements are alluded to but rarely represented. We might expect garments bearing the double life of true rebellion, confronting industrialisation head-on. Yet second-hand clothing remains entirely absent.

Left; Robert Wun (left) The Snow Gown, Time, Haute Couture AW 2024(right) The Yellows Rose, Time, Haute Couture AW 2024, Right; Robert Wun, The Wine Stain Gown, Fear, Haute Couture SS23 & (back T shirt with tomato stain) Moschino by Adrian Appiolaza Resort 2025

The critique of immaculate luxury and “clean” aesthetics is shadowed by its opposite: the rise of “dirty” dressing as a form of chic. The deliberately dishevelled looks popular on social media echo the deeply controversial “homeless chic” of a decade ago, where artificially distressed garments were priced at luxury levels to make them covetable. A way of mocking what thrift and real wear contribute to contemporary fashion. The exhibition remains silent on this point, even as it displays pieces like Kate Moss’s mud-caked boots. Is this truly fashion’s return to the earth, or rather another strategy for glamourising disorder?