{"id":2203570,"date":"2026-10-16T16:40:37","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T13:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2203570"},"modified":"2026-10-16T16:40:37","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T13:40:37","slug":"have-fashion-folk-ruined-the-frieze-london-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2203570","title":{"rendered":"Have Fashion Folk Ruined the Frieze London Experience?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Bianca-Jagger-Frieze-London-2026.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tFrieze Week has become a pilgrimage site for fashion folk. Since 2022, the fashion population has been aggressively migrating to the art fair; that same year McQueen and Roksanda staged their runway shows to coincide with Frieze London and Frieze Masters. In the lead-up to Frieze Week, there has been some chatter among art journalists, publicists and gallerists about the increasing number of fashion attendees making a pitstop just for an Instagram photo.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, has fashion ruined Frieze?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRuined might be a stretch, but I do think that the glut of selfie-hungry fashion girlies may have somewhat cheapened the experience, and I say that as a selfie-hungry fashion girlie myself,\u201d Mahoro Seward, fashion and style editor at British Vogue<\/em>, told ARTnews<\/em>. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Wednesday VIP day has become a day of who\u2019s who: This year\u2019s attendees included Tilda Swinton, Raf Simons, Dries Van Noten, Monica Barbaro, and Bianca Jagger wearing John Galliano\u2019s Zara collection. And the outfits at the fair, or costumes for lack of a better word, got more conceptual (perhaps even more so than the artwork). There were leather, fur, sequins, and two people in matching PVC catsuits in action inside the hot tent. <\/p>\n

\n\tDuring London Fashion Week such kooky outfits grant cheers from street style photographers, but at Frieze, they\u2019re side-eyed. \u201cIn fashion, the more shameless you are, the more you get praised. Fashion people have made a gimmick of the fashion industry,\u201d said one fashion editor, who asked to remain anonymous. That\u2019s not to say that art folk don\u2019t like dressing up and expressing themselves, but it\u2019s usually in a pleated Issey Miyake piece or a neat Herm\u00e8s overcoat or Evelyne bag.<\/p>\n

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\"Tilda<\/div>\n<\/div>
Tilda Swinton at Frieze London 2026.<\/span>Courtesy Frieze\/Linda Nylind<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tKristell Chad\u00e9, Frieze\u2019s executive director of fairs, is of a \u201cthe more, the merrier\u201d opinion. It\u2019s economically beneficial for Frieze and the galleries when fashion wants to get involved, she says. In 2023, Stone Island joined Frieze London as a partner and offered bursaries to 34 emerging galleries, while Dunhill launched its inaugural partnership with Frieze Masters. \u201cFrieze is a platform for various voices and different disciplines. I think having that richness and diversity is what makes the fair unique,\u201d Chad\u00e9 told ARTnews<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore brands have started to take note. Tiffany & Co. has been a partner for Frieze\u2019s Artist-to-Artist initiative since last year and similarly; Loewe has sponsored Frieze London\u2019s VIP program. (It also doesn\u2019t hurt that Loewe\u2019s campaigns make for beautiful imagery on the back of the fair map brochure.) <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThen again,\u201d Seward, the British Vogue<\/em> editor, said, \u201cI don\u2019t think Frieze is exactly hallowed ground. Yes, there\u2019s brilliant work on show of critical merit, but it\u2019s fundamentally a commercial forum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFashion\u2019s invasion of the art world is a strategic ploy\u2014brands are trying to lure the same consumers that are splashing out more than $6 million on Jan Brueghel the Elder\u2019s Still Life of Flowers in a Stoneware Vase<\/em> (1607\u20138), which sold for that amount at Hauser & Wirth\u2019s Frieze Masters booth. The luxury fashion industry is grappling its own slowdown: Consumers are spending cautiously, and brands are increasingly raising their prices. It\u2019s the reason fashion has inhabited spaces such as F1, the US Open and Frieze London. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Roksanda Ilin\u010di\u0107 staged her spring 2023 show the night before Frieze London commenced, she did so because her audience is \u201cmuch more art and creatives-related, which is incredible because it\u2019s a big portion of my customers and usually they\u2019re not able to come to the show, but now they\u2019re all in town (for Frieze), so it\u2019s lovely to be able to see them,\u201d she told me at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFashion loves to get its hands on everything. We\u2019ve seen it in sports, art, theater and Hollywood. Fashion is its own force,\u201d Sunita Kumar Nair, author of Ace: The Times & Style of Tennis<\/em>, told ARTnews<\/em>. In her book, she observes how fashion has become a Trojan horse in tennis and can see the same pattern taking form in the art world. \u201cFashion is like a form of nature: It can either destroy or create if it\u2019s in excess. For me, writing about tennis and fashion was just a really inevitable angle that I saw because of its popularity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShifting the blame onto fashion folk for ruining the Frieze experience may be unfair, but a quick scan of Instagram, they are always the first to plant their flag. \u201cPosting from Frieze is the new \u2018I was here\u2019 scratched on a wall,\u201d said one veteran fashion publicist. After all, swanning around in Balenciaga and air kissing with a tulip of Ruinart in hand has never been a crime. Not yet, anyway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/opinion\/frieze-london-fashion-industry-experience-1234802660\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Bianca-Jagger-Frieze-London-2026.jpg?w=1024″] Frieze Week has become a pilgrimage site for fashion folk. Since 2022, the fashion population has been aggressively migrating to the art fair; that same year McQueen and Roksanda staged their runway shows to coincide with Frieze London and Frieze Masters. In the lead-up to Frieze Week, there has been some chatter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2203570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2203570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2203570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2203570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2203570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}