Two years ago, while rooting through a West London charity shop, I came across a rare, underpriced jewel: a vintage, corseted blazer designed by Vivienne Westwood. It’s barely an exaggeration to say that the item, which cost me £20, became my second skin for the following six months. I wore it to work, dinners, and even my local grocery store. I must have convinced myself the jacket was invincible because when it started to develop worn spots under the armpits, I was heartbroken.

We typically want our clothes to look new each time we wear them, but everything we own has a timeline. This precise tension forms the nexus of Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion, a major exhibition at the Barbican, which opened on September 25. The display, which features exquisitely ruined garments by Alexander McQueen, Maison Margiela, and Westwood, offers a fresh lens on one of fashion’s most popular – and perhaps most surprising – trends. From the sodden runway of Collina Strada’s SS25 Touch Grass, to the mud-filled catwalk of Balenciaga’s SS25 show, the rise of the faux-stained trousers to the revival of distressed denim, the aesthetic of dirtiness has left visible smears across the fashion industry. But what is behind this growing appetite for filth? And, how does it challenge our preconceptions of how we should dress? 

This question is perhaps best answered by the rising stars featured in the Dirty Looks show, whose practices grapple with the interplay of style, sustainability and beauty through unpredictable forms. In this interview, Dazed speaks to three of exhibition’s female contributors, including Michaela Stark, an artist and couturier known for her body-sculpting lingerie that enhances and celebrates the female form; Bubu Ogisi, the multidisciplinary designer behind IAMISIGO, whose decolonial practice is dedicated to preserving the ancestral textile techniques of her Nigerian heritage; and Yaz XL, the Central Saint Martins graduate merging cyber futurism and the grotesque through prosthetics, sculpture and taxidermy. 

‘Dirty’ in fashion typically means cheap and unwearable. Why is it important that your designs subvert that way of thinking?

Yaz XL: I think it’s really refreshing to see signs of dirt in clothes. Everything now is perfectly packaged, in all elements of our lives as consumers – from food to clothes – while, behind the scenes, it all comes from a much dirtier place. I think this particular style brings people back to the primal element of life. I also think it’s interesting to bring to the fore all the dark things that happen in the industry, especially in fast fashion.

Michaela Stark: I feel like dirt in our clothes actually holds a huge element of our humanity, and also remnants of our past. It can add a very intimate feeling that perhaps, as a society, we’re moving away from, particularly with the integration of technology and AI. I think by creating clothes that appear dirty, used, or distressed can add a huge sense of personal value. It feels like a meaningful act to bring that quality back into fashion; it brings a connection to an item that isn’t imitable. 

Bubu Ogisi: I agree, it relates to our human relationships. I think the element of dirt is always involved in our creative process as fashion designers – how we move through the world is a huge part of the work. So many of our materials comes from dirt or the ground. I think an alternative way to view our clothes is by recognising their source. Not everything has to be presented as clean in the end.

It feels like a meaningful act to bring that quality back into fashion; it brings a connection to an item that isn’t imitable

On the subject of technology: in August, the print edition of Vogue featured an AI-generated model. I can’t help but feel that this development defines our contemporary culture’s standard for beauty – glossy, perfect, and unattainable. Something that links each of your designs is that they manipulate the body in some way, but it’s not for the sake of perfection. How do you think your practices resist traditional beauty in the digital age?

Bubu Ogisi: I am, of course, always opposed to traditional ideas of beauty. I always tell people I don’t dress human beings, I dress spirits or entities. That approach, to me, is anti-perfection and anti-tradition. I don’t see people purely based on the visual – I’m looking at their spirit. In my work, anonymity is a running theme. I often don’t show people’s faces. I want to draw people in without trying to create art that looks immaculate. 

Michaela Stark: I feel like traditional beauty is actually quite basic and boring. I don’t really understand why fashion tries to lean into it, particularly because AI is actually so limitless. Why are we recreating the same women who have been on the cover of Vogue forever? Fashion can be, and has been in the past, about celebrating beauty that doesn’t exist within the confines of what’s already socially acceptable. If we don’t challenge those socially acceptable forms of beauty through our work, then we’re essentially stuck in this culture that just repeats harmful trends.

The fact that Vogue, which is meant to be the head runner of the industry, is promoting traditional beauty through AI, really shows a lack of creativity. And yet, we’re in such a creative era; there’s such a boom of newness going on at the moment. I just think fashion is really missing out on an opportunity to create meaningful work.

Yaz XL: I’m always so unattracted to anything AI. It’s so palpably devoid of any human life. It’s scary to me how undetectable it can be, too. My mum is always sending me content thinking it’s real, even though she’s quite sharp! It can be quite uncanny and subtle. In my own work, this element of the uncanny is something I like to introduce differently. I like taking things that are traditionally seen as beautiful and tweaking them. And within this, I’m trying to return to the primal root of things – their basic, evolutionary, and cellular structures. 

Michaela Stark: Uncanniness – that’s such an interesting idea. I love how that is something that exists in AI, but can also be exploited and subverted by art and fashion. 

Yaz XL: The uncanny has a very different purpose in my work, of course, but it still comes down to the manipulation of the body. It might be digitally editing a head to make it look unusually large, or just emphasising certain physical features. I’m really drawn to amplifying all the variations in human bodies. I find that beautiful. 

How have your geographic and cultural backgrounds shaped your visions for fashion?

Yaz XL: I grew up in a rural town in England where it was quite scary to not be anything other than a carbon copy of everybody else. This is a relatively universal teenage experience, at least in the UK. Growing up, if you’re not dressing or behaving exactly like your peers, it can feel a bit unsafe. But, for me, my experience changed when I got to my late teens. Almost suddenly, I was doing everything in my power to be the opposite of everything else – and that manifested through the clothes I wore.

Michaela Stark: Socially, I had a similar experience, but in Australia. It was always so hot, and so I was used to dressing quite naked, which came with its own issues because we were showing a lot of skin. We’d also wear a lot of colour, probably because it was too hot to wear black. It felt freeing. But then, I remember around 2010, while bikini-beach culture was still going strong, there was so much judgment around women’s bodies. It was the skinny jean, heroin chic era. I remember mortifying moments when I’d jump in the sea, and then jump back up, and my tits would just be fully out. Moments like these happened all the time: my boobs overflowing; my belly overflowing. It wasn’t acceptable to the culture, but I couldn’t cover it – it was too hot! 

I think those experiences shaped my attitude today. Eventually, I was just like: ‘Well, this is just how my body is, so let's embrace that’. You’re from a hot place, right, Bubu?

Bubu Ogisi: Nigeria is obviously really hot, which has a big impact on how people dress, and how I think about fashion, too. I also did a lot of travelling, though, when I was growing up, in and outside of the continent, and so I was exposed to other cultures, climates, and different ideas of beauty. 

I’ve always been fascinated by how people in both my and other people’s cultures cognitively relate to their environment through how they dress. As for my ancestors, clothing was a form of ritual and protection – for war, marriage, and everyday life. In everything I do, I try to channel this slow, ritualistic process. My mother is obsessed with fabrics, and would often gift them to people on special occasions, including to me on my birthday. That’s how I started making my clothes. It became a huge part of my life.

It’s important to me to keep women at the heart of everything I do, because we are the origin of everything

Each of you clearly had very specific experiences of fashion growing up. I can’t help but feel like misogyny is something that each of you has had to overcome, and that how you choose to dress has been very much a part of that story. As female designers, is gender something you think about during the process of making your clothes? 

Michaela Stark: I think it’s really telling that, when you go to fashion school, the majority of the class are women. But for some reason, most of the people who get hired in the industry, at least for the big jobs, are men. If you look at the lingerie industry, for instance, almost all of the creative directors are men. Lingerie is one of the most intimate garments you can buy, but most of the men who are being hired to lead the companies that design them have absolutely no experience wearing their products, or have any knowledge of what it’s like to be perceived so intimately. A lot of the time, these men are wearing jeans and a t-shirt, or a suit, and then they get called a genius for putting a woman in a fat suit, or exposing their pussies. 

There’s so much strength to being a female designer because you’re able to create with more awareness and sensitivity. It can feel quite empowering. Female style to me means trying to go further, pushing my body to its limits, but with the intuitive knowledge of what such an exposure means in the social and political sense. 

Bubu Ogisi: I come from a very patriarchal society. When I started my research over ten years ago, it was about understanding the discourse about gender in other African countries, but also outside of the continent, too. I started to learn how these dynamics are created and by whom. It was interesting to study how, in other places, such as Ghana, the culture is much more matriarchal. They respect the queen’s mother. She even holds more power than an actual king. 

When I observe the clothes women are making in the areas I’ve visited, they’re so expansive. The men will focus on a small loom, but the women are making much bigger garments, with so much more colour and pattern. It’s important to me to keep women at the heart of everything I do, because we are the origin of everything.

Yaz XL: I was looking at my piece for the Dirty Looks exhibition earlier in my studio, and I realised it relates to my experience of being a woman more than I originally considered. The work, which is submerged in a tank of water, almost like a womb, is designed to get more and more rusty over time – a process that will be witnessed by new people each day as a result of its public display. You can interpret this sculpture how you like, but for me, it feels like a representation of the male gaze – the eyes that follow us in public and make us vulnerable. 

I collaborated with Oscar Saurin on the metal work. At one point, he was like, ‘Don’t touch it right now because the fingerprints will make it rust more’, and I thought that was so beautiful: the more she’s handled, the more she corrodes. I don’t want to use this word ‘armour’ – or at least in this context – but it really does feel like work is an enforcing of personal space. I love how she reacts to being touched. 

Dirty Looks is on at the Barbican in London from 25 September 2025 to 25 January 2026.