In Photos: Untold stories of Black British fashion and style
- Text by Miss Rosen
- Photography by Eileen Perrier
As the 1970s took hold, a new generation of Brits of African and Caribbean descent emerged at the vanguard of fashion, film, music, literature, and art, forging a revolution that would redefine culture and style forevermore.
It is here that The Missing Thread: Untold Stories of Black British Fashion begins, weaving the little-know history of Black British fashion over half a century into a majestic tapestry of creativity, originality, and innovation. Curated by the Black Oriented Legacy Development Agency (BOLD), the exhibition looks at style within a sociopolitical framework to explore the ways in which nightlife, performance, tailoring, and home have shaped the distinctive silhouettes of the past 50 years.
“In the exhibition we aim to show how fine artists, experimental film makers, ballet dancers, couture fashion designers, novelists and so on, are as integral to Black British culture as grime artists, DJs, and athletes. We’re interested in how all those facets of Black culture are linked and come from shared sensibilities,” says Jason Jules, who co-curated the exhibition alongside BOLD partners Andrew Ibi and Harris Elliott.
The Missing Thread opens with a late ‘70s photograph of 10 young fashion designers, all of whom had studied in St Martins School of Fashion, including Bruce Oldfield, Rifat Ozbek, Ninivah Keomo, John Galliano and Joe Casely-Hayford OBE — whose work forms the culmination of the exhibition and the first major staging from the late designer’s archive.
“Joe was one of the main impetuses for the entire show,” Jules say of Casely-Hayford (1956 – 2019), whose subversive take on Savile Row sensibilities revolutionised menswear and brought devotees including Lou Reed, the Clash and U2.
“His work explored political resistance, Afrofuturism, Black love, music as a unifying force, sportswear, traditional tailoring, sustainability and recycling, introducing these ideas ahead of everyone else but rarely received credit or recognition. He progressed despite lack of support from institutions within the British fashion industry in ways that only affirmed his creative talent even more.”
Casely-Hayford’s four-decades cast a wide arc across The Missing Thread. The exhibition also features a wealth of documentary, portrait, and fashion photographs that provide a deeper look at the way images shaped identity, expression, and community.
Included in the show are Raphael Albert’s photos from the Miss Black and Beautiful pageants; Armet Francis’s legendary 1970s fashion shoots on the streets of Brixton; Jennie Baptiste’s photographs of the Dancehall scene; and Pogus Caesar’s photographs of the 1985 Handsworth Riots, sparked by tensions between the police and the Black and Asian communities in the West Midlands.
“The exhibition is intentionally cross-generational; we have designers and artists whose work speak of the past respond to the times in which they were made, and we also have emerging artists who tap into a rich shared resource of Black British culture brought into existence by previous designers, artists and subcultures,” says Jules.
“What’s interesting is that for many of the younger artists, identity seems less of a battleground than it does or rather was for their predecessors. That’s in part because they’re building on the foundations laid by those predecessors and battles won by them.”
The Morgan Stanley Exhibition- The Missing Thread: Untold Stories of Black British Fashion is on view until January 7, 2024, at Somerset House in London.
Follow Miss Rosen on Twitter.
You might like
The last days of St Agnes Place, London’s longest ever running squat
Off the grid — Photographer Janine Wiedel spent four years documenting the people of the Kennington squat, who for decades made a forgotten row of terraced houses a home.
Written by: Isaac Muk
How Japan revolutionised art & photography in the ’60s and ’70s
From Angura to Provoke — A new photobook chronicles the radical avant-garde scene of the postwar period, whose subversion of the medium of image making remains shocking and groundbreaking to this day.
Written by: Miss Rosen
Artifaxing: “We’ve become so addicted to these supercomputers in our hands”
Framing the future — Predominantly publishing on Instagram and X, the account is one of social media’s most prominent archiving pages. We caught up with the mysterious figure behind it to chat about the internet’s past, present and future, finding inspiration and art in the age of AI.
Written by: Isaac Muk
The lacerating catharsis of body suspension in Hong Kong
Self-Ferrying — In one of the world’s most densely packed cities, an underground group of young people are piercing their skin and hanging their bodies with hooks in a shocking exploration of pain and pleasure. Sophie Liu goes to a session to understand why they partake in the extreme underground practice.
Written by: Sophie Liu
What we’re excited for at SXSW 2026
Austin 40 — For the festival’s 40th anniversary edition, we are heading to Texas to join one of the biggest global meetups of the year. We’ve selected a few things to highlight on your schedules.
Written by: Huck
Capturing the spirit of the ’90s surf scene with Volcom
Nineteen 90 Nowhere — The brand’s latest Featured Artist Series collection sees them tap three surfers and artists in Gony Zubizarretta, Seth Conboy and Issam Auptel, whose neo-grunge work blends the rawness of the decade with the present.
Written by: Isaac Muk
