Mannequins Pic: Hard Munks
The Barbican will be hosting a Jean Paul Gaultier inspired pop-up market, celebrating Hackney street fashion and aspiring fashion designers this summer.
The arts centre’s annual Beyond Barbican programme will see Ram Street Fashion Market transformed into a showcase for new graduates, east London designers and rising stars who reflect the local street and club style.
Create London, an organisation forming routes into the arts for young people, will be recruiting 30 local rising stars to work on the market.
Those recruited will be given a stall at the market, and will also be mentored by east London fashion and design employers where they will benefit from expert advice, work experience, and for some, longer term paid employment.
Create London’s project is supported by the Mayor’s Fund of London, which aims to improve employability through skills for London’s youth.
Ram Place Fashion Market will transform the shell remnants of a roofless warehouse, located in the borough’s new fashion hub of Morning Lane, for the nine day event.
Fashion commentator Jeff Horsley who will be co-curating the market said: “It’s going to be a challenge, but it’s also a fantastic site. We aren’t going to conceal he fact it’s derelict.”
It will showcase alternative street fashion, which has influenced top designers, like Jean Paul Gaultier who was known to fly to London in the 90s to draw inspiration from its street fashion.
Louise Jeffrey, Director of Arts at the Barbican, says: “You just need to sit in a café in Hackney and see how people have done amazingly inventive things themselves with their clothes. It might be something picked up from a second hand shop, but some people have talents and can make it look extraordinary.”
The Ram Place Fashion Market event will start on July 12 and run alongside the Barbican’s Gaultier exhibition, ‘The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier; From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk’.
It comes after the success of the Barbican’s event last summer, which saw a three-dimensional architectural illusion take over Ashwin Street in Dalston.
By Emma Henderson
