SHOWSTUDIO: FASHION REVOLUTION OPENS AT SOMERSET HOUSE

NICK KNIGHT, ALEXANDER MCQUEEN, JOHN GALLIANO, NAOMI CAMPBELL, GARETH PUGH, COMME DES GARÇONS, KATE MOSS, BJÖRK

Somerset House will present a major new exhibition SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution, featuring the work of SHOWstudio, the award-winning fashion website led by Nick Knight, running from 17 September – 20 December 2009.

Collaborating with high-profile photographers, artists, writers, designers, stylists and cultural figures, SHOWstudio has forged a revolution in the way fashion is communicated. Over the past nine years SHOWstudio has championed fashion film as a wholly new form of experiencing fashion in the digital age. Showcasing a retrospective of SHOWstudio’s groundbreaking projects around the three central themes of ‘Process’, ‘Performance’ and ‘Participation’, the exhibition will continue in this same tradition of innovation and invention giving a unique insight into the world of fashion.

Highlights will include:
• SHOWstudio’s most significant collaborations with creatives including Alexander McQueen, Peter Saville, Liberty Ross, Heston Blumenthal, Gareth Pugh, Simon Foxton, and Julie Verhoeven.

• A live photographic studio located within the exhibition space, hosting regular fashion shoots with Nick Knight and other leading photographers, laying bare the process of fashion image-making.

• Nick Knight will shoot 100 portraits of London’s ‘beau monde’, models, actors, musicians and artists

• A program of new fashion films, specially commissioned by SHOWstudio.

SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution is the first in a series of exhibitions produced by Somerset House Trust to focus on the subject of fashion and will open during London Fashion Week, which will be held for the first time in 2009 in its new home at Somerset House.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Somerset House Exhibitions Curator Claire Catterall, Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio, Professor Penny Martin, Rootstein Hopkins Chair of Fashion Imagery at the London College of Fashion and Alistair O’Neill, Senior Research Fellow at Central St Martins College of Art and Design. The exhibition is designed by Ab Rogers.