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Nick Knight, Gareth Pugh, !WOWOW!, Alex Box, Eugene Souleiman and Mandi Lennard

Fash Off

In parallel with Paris haute couture week in July 2006, British designer Gareth Pugh staged an exhilarating series of art-meets-fashion performances inspired by different aspects of his meteoric rise to fashion stardom. Alongside these performance pieces, image diaries and documentary films created by Pugh himself unravel his creative process before your very eyes.

More in this project

Pre-Production Meeting

Showcasing the Fash-Off project from conception to completion, this film documents the first pre-production meeting on Tuesday 4 April 2006 between London designer Gareth Pugh and the SHOWstudio team. Watch as Pugh discusses his first concepts for the project with SHOWstudio Director Nick Knight, Editor in Chief Penny Martin and Creative Director Paul Hetherington - initial ideas that will later flower into Fash-Off.

Man turns into human mirrorball then hairy poodle! Woman vomits black sick to a soul soundtrack as pulsating, pneumatic ball powers into action! On the face of it, Gareth Pugh’s five live afternoon performances appear to consist of sensationalism, glamour and spectacle. But the dark themes at the heart of these six films and the sincerity of Pugh’s performances hint at a complex and slightly antipathetical relationship with the fashion system in which the designer finds himself.

Performance Gallery

This gallery of stills, captured during the process of Gareth Pugh's couture week residency at SHOWstudio, documents the entire process as Gareth Pugh utilised fashion to transform himself before your very eyes in his one-off series of performance art-meets-fashion broadcasts.

In the two months running up to his Fash-Off performances in July 2006, Gareth Pugh agreed to take the SHOWstudio video camera along on visits home to Sunderland and on a working trip to Cannes. These two intimate, diary-style shorts give a unique insight into the young designer’s visual world and how the seemingly unrelated worlds of home and work have some surprisingly interconnected strands.

A complete video archive charting Gareth Pugh's London catwalk shows, from his first show as part of new talent launchpad Fashion East through to Autumn/Winter 2008. Also included is Pugh's self-styled 'haute couture' television commercial for HSBC

Polaroid Gallery

Over the course of the two months running up to his live performances in July 2006, we asked Gareth to keep a visual diary of his ideas and actions, recorded in his customary Polaroid prints. The images reveal the cast of WOWOW! characters and a variety of industry events (from fashion parties and the Cannes film festival to a trip home to see his parents in Sunderland) that make up the colourful world of Gareth Pugh.

Read articles and interviews with Gareth Pugh from numerous publications, including British Vogue, The Independent and The Financial Times.