Nicol & Ford

Parrhesia examined Magnus Hirschfeld, the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft and queer and trans life in Weimar Germany through a 24-look off-site runway at The Vanguard. The collection began with saturated romantic colour, bias cutting, feathers and butterfly imagery before moving towards black, translucent, armoured and skin-like forms, giving the destruction of cultural archives a material progression across the show.

Screen printing, antique glass beads, salvaged lace, sterling-silver chainmail, leather and body-matched fabricated skin joined the founders’ garment construction. Miguel Urbina Tan styled the runway, Dino Dimitriadis served as creative producer and the maker network included Phoebe Hyles, Tobias Sangkuhl, J. R. Harvey and Julian Dimase. Casting drew directly from queer and trans communities, making continuity of lived experience part of a collection concerned with historical erasure.