A lot has been said – and written – about the cyclical nature of fashion, and its acceleration in recent years thanks to a culture of hype and hollow trends. Fashion photography and filmmaking rides in its wake, trying to make sense of the current moment and situate it in time. But the best fashion image-making can also look forward in time. It acts as a “prism through which our desires as a culture are both articulated and anticipated”.

“Modern beauty standards are almost singlehandedly shaped by fashion and beauty imagery, which is an inescapable part of life today – fashion images are there on the cover of magazines, in shops, on billboards, on buses, taxis, on your phone, popping up on websites,” says Violet Conroy, curator of Rethinking Fashion Image, a new show at Lower Stable Street Lightboxes, and deputy editor of AnOthermag.com. “They are an ever-changing barometer of what we desire as a culture, and if they’re really excellent, they tell us what we want before we even realise we want it.”

The exhibition brings together nine young photographers – students and alumnae from the nearby Central Saint Martins – at the cutting-edge of fashion image-making. Each, including Kaine Harrys Anamalu, Coco Wu, Carina Kehlet Schou, Xueling Chen, Rino Qiu, Camille Lemoine, Maya-Aska Arai, Olivia Chen and Kaiwei Duan, and Lorane Hochstatter, provides a new lens through which to see our current moment.

And what do they see? “Themes explored include humans’ connection to nature, diasporic identity and community, relationships, evolving notions of femininity, and the everyday, with projects captured across the world from Scotland to Shanghai, London to Milan, and beyond,” says Conroy. This reflects our cultural moment, with its focus on “diversity, inclusivity, and sustainability”, and often involves street-cast models who stray outside conventional fashion standards. “People are opting for ‘real people’, as opposed to the high fashion runway models of the past.”

Perhaps most importantly, each image-maker pushes back, to some extent, against the endless churn of contemporary fashion – which is easier said than done. “The rise of social media has had a huge impact on fashion imagery. Things need to be bold, quick, snappy, attention grabbing and easily digestible,” Conroy suggests. By contrast, the likes of Anamalou or Lemoine push at the boundaries, asking what’s possible beyond the limits of the fashion industry’s (sometimes encumbered) imagination.

“I feel that all the photographers in the show are working against the disposable demands of fashion imagery today, instead building rich and highly personal visual worlds... A lot of the work in the show also feels quite timeless [and] difficult to place.” 

Rethinking Fashion Image is on show at Lower Stable Street Lightboxes, Kings Cross, in London until 5 January 2026.