Via WhatsApp and word of mouth, rumours of who might be walking Natasha Zinko’s SS27 catwalk had begun swirling days before the show. Last season, the Ukrainian-born, London-based designer had called on Spice Girl Mel B to close her AW26 runway, a moment that quickly went viral on social media. If the rumours were true, then Zinko clearly wished to up the ante for SS27.
Word of this season’s wild runway show had clearly spread like wildfire too: the crowd outside Zinko’s north London show space required a strong arm to muscle through, the situation worsened by just one small doorway through which hundreds of guests had to enter. But once in, we made our way through the dusty corridors of the industrial space, which opened up to reveal a huge atrium cutting through the building from top to bottom, each mezzanine floor split into rows of square-shaped openings separated by concrete columns.
The show was inside Collins Music Hall, a huge brutalist venue in the heart of Islington. A quick peek over the metal railings revealed a grid of black stools on the ground floor of the atrium, ready for guests to take their seats.
After a 45-minute wait, Zinko’s show, Pay Per View, began. This season, the designer had been thinking about the way that modern life is a constant circuit of surveillance, whether that be big tech spying on us through AI sunglasses, or us peering into each other’s lives through our own algorithms.
Show notes revealed that Zinko had also been reading Foucault while crafting the collection, and the setting suddenly made sense – the building, with its square-shaped openings on each floor of the atrium, had been selected for its uncanny resemblance to a panopticon, had been selected for its uncanny resemblance to a panopticon, a type of prison designed so that inmates can be observed from a central position without knowing when they are being watched. Zinko had placed the audience in the centre, in the position of the jailer, and her models had been cast as those imprisoned in the cells.
But what about that rumoured cast? When the show burst into life, models appeared in each square opening, illuminated by blindingly harsh spotlights.
Katie Price, the British glamour model and television personality, appeared in a tight black waistcoat and matching shorts; The Sopranos Drea de Matteo was next, puffing on a cigarette next to a director’s chair with her name on it; Kelly Osbourne was there too, wearing a sleek black bob and carrying a bat pendant as a tribute to her late father. Also popping out of the panopticon were all manner of different characters, ranging from cowboys to cleaning ladies, indie rockers to opera singers, footballers and sailors.
“Like the prisoners in this ingenious construct, we the Modern Humans walk out of our homes into a world where any one of us may be under numerous kinds of surveillance anytime, whether that be from the state or some schmo with a camera,” said Zinko. The designer also explained that “the individuals who thrive in this attention-based economy” are those who have “managed to establish monetisable public personas”, which is why this season was also a collaboration with OnlyFans, with shorts and ‘Pay for View’ pants appearing on the runway too.
For the close of the show, the models eventually broke free from their cells and descended into the audience below, making their way through the crowd in a bid for freedom. At the start of the show, some guests had noticed that the stools had been placed unreasonably close to one another, so much so that the runway was barely discernible through a sea of almost-touching knees.
Because of this, when Price, Osbourne et al walked the runway, the effect was one of uncomfortable closeness, echoing the claustrophobia of the surveillance state Zinko had been exploring.
For all the backstage images from the show, scroll through the gallery above
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The designer expanded his monochromatic palette at London Fashion Week, with an eclectic injection of crimson, teal and shocking pink