Leigh Bowery’s Enduring Influence: Fashion, Playfulness and Spectacle

How the Tate Modern exhibition reframes today’s fashion landscape through Bowery’s adventurous spirit

Mar 03, 2025

Maybe it’s because I’ve now seen the Leigh Bowery exhibition at Tate Modern not once, but twice, that over the weekend, I started viewing fashion imagery through the quirky—if not entirely warped—lens of Leigh’s vision. One video sequence, in particular, has lodged itself in my mind.

In the first long room of the exhibition, a glorious video plays on a loop, showing Leigh getting ready with Trojan, Michael Clark, and Rachel Auburn in their Stepney council flat. At one moment, iconic dancer and choreographer Michael Clark reappears after a costume change—having been told his previous look was lacklustre—now clad in a bubble-hemmed skirt. He follows his reappearance with a perfectly executed balletic twirl. Watching this, I suddenly recalled the bubble skirts in Steven Stokey-Daley’s recent AW25 show.

I don’t mean to bemoan fashion’s tendency to rehash itself, nor am I setting up a Diet Prada-style takedown of fashion referencing. My response is celebratory. Compared to other recent exhibitions on ’80s nightlife and fashion—some of which I found depressing, cluttered with faded eighties tat retrieved from garages and spare rooms—the Tate show captures something else entirely. There’s a palpable sense of fun, a refusal to take oneself too seriously, and that adopted British ridiculousness that makes Leigh Bowery’s legacy feel infectious rather than nostalgic.

Elsewhere in the same video, Leigh makes a costume change of his own, reappearing in a frilled Little Bo Peep-style ensemble—bonnet and frilly pants included. This immediately brought to mind Simone Rocha’s AW25 collection, particularly her take on the rugby shirt, as well as her previous collection for the upcoming Spring/Summer season, which featured boys in ballet slippers, over-the-knee socks, and exaggeratedly wide shorts—inviting comparisons to the tutu. Of course, Leigh Bowery wasn’t the sole architect of gender play in fashion (that’s been happening forever), but it’s interesting to see echoes of his theatricality resurfacing in 2025.

Another striking video sequence features an interview with Caryn Franklin, where Leigh reflects on his relationship with fashion. With mock seriousness, he declares that while he loves the world of fashion, he’s unsure of its influence on him. It’s tempting to wonder: if Leigh were alive today, would he be interested in contemporary fashion, so deeply entwined as it is with the endless thrum of social media? Or would he have sought to become removed from it and even more firmly ensconced in the art world establishment?

What feels certain is his fearless objectivity and ability to satirise fashion—qualities that feel as healthy now as they were then.