Mad About The Boy, on display at the Fashion Space Gallery from 8 January to 2 April 2016, explored fashion’s obsession with youth, focusing on the way ideas of the teenage boy are constructed through specific collections and fashion images. It was the first exhibition curated by SHOWstudio editor Lou Stoppard. Sparked by the success of designers like Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent, Raf Simons and Gosha Rubchinskiy – all of whom seem to share a fixation with youth culture – the exhibition set out to examine the tropes and parallels within fashion’s treatment of youth, unpicking the many notions of the young male that feature in fashion’s imagination, from outsider to sexual fantasy to reveller. It presented the work of a variety of designers and image-makers, current as well as select examples from the seventies, eighties and nineties, for whom the boy provides a constant source of inspiration. Testimony about masculinity and youth was also included to shed light on the sense of fluidity and possibility that many associate with teenage years – a time of perceived infinite opportunity, spontaneity and creative freedom.
- Alasdair McLellan
- Jason Evans
- Glen Luchford
- Jamie Hawkesworth
- Meadham Kirchhoff
- Sibling
- Raf Simons
- JW Anderson
- Christopher Shannon
- Jun Takahashi
- Martine Rose
- Nasir Mazhar
- Undercover
- Judy Blame
- Tony Hornecker
- Mark Leckey
- Kat Thiel
- Polona Dolžan
- Ligaya Salazar
- Younji Ku
- Peter Saville
- Lou Stoppard
- Gosha Rubchinskiy
- Nick Knight
- Dylan Jones
- Alex Bilmes
- Adam Murray
- Michel Gaubert
- Fashion Space Gallery