Insights

How a pair of jeans turned wear into a performance. Twenty years ago, Stone Island released a pair of jeans that came packaged with a set of printed instructions and a small sandpaper glove. The idea was simple: you could age your own denim at home. The instructions told you to place your usual pocket contents inside — keys, wallet, coins — then rub the glove over the raised areas of the fabric to create creases, scuffs, and fading. It was a strange kind of intimacy, as if t

At a glance, the sticker above looks just like one of the football stickers I wrote about last week. The kind that declare loyalty without hesitation, the sort you would expect to find in the toilets of the local Wetherspoons. But look closer: A LOAD OF WANNABEES, DRIPS AND DIVS… THEY’LL PROBABLY PUT THAT ON A STICKER. It borrows the shape and swagger of the older language (right down to the St George’s cross), yet the whole thing collapses the instant you focus on it. Self-d

Most people never notice them. The small vinyl stickers layered on lampposts, stuck on bus shelters or plastered above the piss stones in the pub toilet. But once you start looking, they’re everywhere, a parallel record of football culture that doesn’t appear in official histories or club museums. Over the past decade I’ve been photographing them, documenting a graphic language of belonging, rivalry, and identity. These stickers feature everything from club crests and slogans

In the mid-1990s, two men stood on a Soho street corner watching CCTV cameras swivel overhead. Adam Thorpe and Joe Hunter had just founded Vexed Generation, a label built for a city learning to live under surveillance. Their garments, zipped masks, mesh panels, and layered shells looked less like fashion and more like countermeasures. They weren’t dressing men for attention; they were teaching them how to disappear. London was changing fast. CCTV cameras were spreading across

For the last thirteen years, I’ve been watching people photograph themselves outside the Haçienda Apartments in Manchester. Through the curtains of my window opposite, I’ve quietly captured the moment that they pose beneath the sign, an unseen witness to something that mostly goes unnoticed. At first, I thought it was simple nostalgia; people returning to capture a memory. But over time, as the gestures repeated, I realised it was something else: ritual. Each visit follows th

Next week, Aitor Throup returns to Burnley with his first major retrospective. This exhibition is more than just a showcase of his work. It represents a return to the town where he first faced prejudice and discovered a sense of belonging. Here, resistance evolved from a means of survival into a powerful method. Turf Moor and the Making of Refusal Growing up in Burnley, Aitor Throup encountered hostility and racism that marked him as an outsider. Yet, on the terraces of Turf

Yesterday, CNN asked what happens when extremists wear fashion brands, using Stone Island as its example of how symbols can become contested. The question sounds simple, but it reveals something deeper — how easily fashion absolves itself from the hierarchies it helped create. It assumes brands are neutral until corrupted by bad actors. But fashion isn’t passive. It has always been one of the clearest ways societies express power, class, and control. And when those symbols sl

In the 18th century, the calling card was a symbol of class and access. Copperplate-engraved and elegantly typeset, it served as a small performance of civility, proof that you belonged to a world where reputation was currency. Working-class men did not need such things, and no means to produce them even if they did. Print was expensive, and etiquette was not their language. Two hundred years later, the photocopier changed that. A machine built for bureaucracy and business be

Last week’s Dior show opened on an off note — or more precisely, three. The soundtrack of a specially commissioned Adam Curtis film began to play, its low piano tones reverberating through the space. Projected onto the giant inverted pyramid, they hung like a warning, signalling that something beneath Dior’s polished surface was already starting to come apart.

Dress codes are never about clothes — they are about control. No hats. No hoodies. No sunglasses.” Shopwindow, October 2025. How we dress...

Twenty-six years later, the razor blade dress returns — not on the catwalk, but in the Barbican’s new exhibition Dirty Looks: Desire and...

In the 1990s, Designers Weren’t Employees. They Were the Vision. In the 1990s, fashion was driven by iconic designers like McQueen,...

At the turn of the millennium, the fashion industry was dominated by fantasy. Most fashion houses relied on celebrities, campaigns, and...

In England today, to hang a flag is to take a side. Union Jacks tied to lampposts, St George’s crosses painted onto roundabouts, and...

Theatre, memory, and the ghosts that walked his runway To see yourself turned into a character, rehearsed by someone else and ready to...

How a chip shop outside Manchester's Etihad Stadium became the frontline for fashion, football, and working-class identity The calm...

Founded by Bill Green in 1954, Vince Man’s Shop was one of Britain’s first menswear boutiques. Located in Soho, it helped redefine how...