Having only a vague idea of what the SHOWstudio exhibition would be about ("digital fashion blahblah wank" was probably the sum total), I dropped in on Saturday without being massively hyped up about it. It turned out to be really interesting... though I still left with the feeling of a good idea losing its impact on execution. For eg, the phone messages left by Lily Cole et al from various fashion weeks. The idea is, you pick up a pleasingly 90s-school-secretary-office lookin' phone (the phone's the best bit) to hear Lily's words of wisdom. And that's it. Yep. Who's going to hang about listening to a glorified answer machine when there's amazing DIY designer clothes and hentai-inspired wallpaper to be checking out?
So, yeah - SHOWstudio had some bizarre non-event aspects to it, but also some genuis bits too - like the live photshoots you can go all Peeping Tom at through at through a two-way mirror. There wasn't one going on when we were there (should have planned ahead! - but the next one will be livestreamed here), so we contented ourselves with watching films of shoots past. My favourite was the BDSM-inspired ditty (annoyingly can't find out who it was by - web, you fail me), a right old mix of disturbing and hilarious and weirdly beautiful if I ever saw one. Breathtaking shoes, though. That is the one solid fact there.
Also, in the Fashion Film section at the end, you get to watch a glorious short of Naomi Campbell going mental with a machine gun. I've since read it's meant to be about racism - ahahaha. No it's not. It's about climbing through a window into Naomi Campbell's secret dreamword, which makes the £5 admission totally worth it, in my opinion.
