Mad About The Boy

Mad About The Boy explored fashion’s obsession with youth, focusing on the way ideas of the teenage boy are constructed through specific collections and fashion images. 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 1980s and 1990s, 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.

Designers and contributors included: Raf Simons, Kim Jones, Meadham Kirchhoff, Larry Clark, Nick Knight, Nasir Mazhar, Tyrone Lebon, Christopher Shannon, Martine Rose, Gosha Rubchinskiy, Alasdair McLellan, Jason Evans, Jun Takahashi, Judy Blame, Patrick Robyn, Sibling, Glen Luchford, Brett Lloyd, Mark Leckey and JW Anderson.

Mad About The Boy was curated by Lou Stoppard and commissioned by Ligaya Salazar.

Exhibition Design by Tony Hornecker.

Image: Mad About the Boy Fashion Space Gallery, 2016. Photo by Emma Hyppa.