October in London – a month when the city dazzles with a unique, almost electrifying vibrancy. The post-fashion week glow still lingers, air is refreshingly chill, and the city residents are back from their summer retreats. Shops are filled with the season’s latest fashions, and new exhibitions are launched daily across small independent galleries and internationally recognised museums, making London a truly rare global capital with unparalleled energy.
Among the most anticipated events is the Frieze art fair in Regent’s Park, an October jewel that captures London’s cultural allure, attracting the most sophisticated and eccentric crowds.
Frieze Fair: a history
Frieze Art Fair launched in London in 2004, following the success of Frieze magazine, which debuted in 1991. It quickly became a key event for contemporary art, drawing over 60,000 visitors each year, including top collectors, curators, and art enthusiasts. The fair also features Frieze Masters, showcasing works from ancient times to the 20th century, blending past and present in one vibrant experience.
Frieze New York debuted in 2012, followed by the launch of Frieze Los Angeles in 2019, which highlights the city’s dynamic art scene and global influence. By 2024, the LA edition featured over 95 international galleries. In 2022, Frieze expanded to Seoul, focusing on contemporary art with a spotlight on galleries from across Asia. Each fair brings unique art events and initiatives, drawing both local and international crowds.
Fashion and Art Collide
Frieze always offers plenty of art-based events, sponsorships, talks and parties supported by fashion brands and retailers, with an aim of fostering contemporary art collaborations and engaging with the target audience of art consumers worldwide.
In 2023, Loewe sponsored the opening party for Frieze Los Angeles at the Getty Villa, emphasising its commitment to art-based initiatives. In 2023, Frieze Seoul attracted three luxury fashion art-based initiatives. Shinsegae, a leading Korean luxury department store, created the “Art Retail” Lounge, featuring traditional Korean tea and desserts alongside works by Korean artists. W Concept, a Korean fashion platform, hosted a lounge inspired by collecting practices at the intersection of fashion and art, offering AI-generated artwork and limited-edition collections by featured artists.
Chanel partnered with Frieze Seoul 2023 to present the “NOW & NEXT” video series, spotlighting Korean artists and promoting artistic dialogue across generations. Stone Island and Dunhill joined Frieze London 2023 as principal partners, supporting different art-based initiatives. Stone Island’s partnership prioritises providing support to emerging galleries through financial contributions, while Dunhill sponsors Frieze Masters talks, while showcasing its collection alongside archival pieces.
Frieze and Fashion 2024
Stone Island, an Italian luxury fashion brand and the primary global sponsor of the fair this year, provided bursary support to all Focus section emerging galleries contributing to exhibiting costs, and hosted Frieze London dinner on the opening night. Stone Island also created a T-shirt displaying a design by Nat Faulkner, represented by Frieze Focus gallery Brunette Coleman.
At Frieze Masters, Dunhill, a heritage brand known for craftsmanship and British design, organised talks with Mark Leckey, Jeremy Deller, Lou Stoppard and Nathalie du Pasquier to discuss the current state of art market and creative process.
At No.9 Cork Street, Frieze’s permanent exhibition space in West London, Marco Capaldo, creative director of British luxury fashion brand 16Arlington, curated an exhibition Memories of the Future in collaboration with Almine Rech gallery, featuring works by Rhea Dillon, Alexandra Metcalf and George Rouy.
Burberry and System Magazine hosted a talk between photographer Gabriel Moses and hip-hop artist Loyle Carner, along with a talk hosted by Milan-based fashion brand Del Core in collaboration with Flash Art Magazine. The Mount Street Neighbourhood Arts Festival organised a retail pop-up by the Sarabande Foundation and House of Bandits in Mayfair, attracting shoppers to stores by Erdem and Marni, guided by a specially commissioned map from artist Sainte Maria.
Additionally, Paul Smith launched a virtual reality-enhanced gallery space at its flagship store. Loewe presented an artist-led collaboration with Studio Voltaire gallery to present limited-edition artworks created in collaboration with renowned artists Alvaro Barrington, Anthea Hamilton, Sheila Hicks, Sanya Kantarovsky and Ron Nagle, followed by a party. Meanwhile Margaret Howell store hosted an exhibition featuring artworks by Lucienne Day, a British textile designer.
Alongside initiatives, Frieze magazine and special fair editions have always featured fashion advertising, yet this year Frieze Week London special edition published the first fashion shoot styled with fashion brands and pieces from art collective CFGNY. This trend highlights the growing connection between fashion and art industries.
New Layout
Approximately 300 global galleries participated in the fair this year, running from 9 to 13 October.
This year makes the London fair environment extra special due to a new reimagined floor plan, that encourages interaction, discovery and dialogue. In contrast to previous years, where visitors were immediately greeted by mega-galleries such as Gagosian, Pace, David Zwirner, and Hauser & Wirth, the entrance leads to two striking sections.
The Focus section displays 34 presentations by emerging galleries, including Rose Easton, Nicoletti, Public and Harlesden High Street that are located in London. Artist-to-Artist section presents solo booths of emerging artists chosen by world-established artists, turning admiration into support. This shift in the layout is underpinned by the global financial slowdown, making emerging artists with lower price points more attractive for buyers and collectors.
Celebrities and Fashion
The fair was awash with famous faces, including Bianca Jagger, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bill Murray, FKA twigs and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Unlike Fashion Week, where editors and influencers are often dressed in borrowed or gifted pieces, art fairs provide a unique glimpse into what the ultra-wealthy art connoisseurs and fashionistas actually purchase from luxury fashion brands.
There was a flow of Dries Van Noten dresses, Chloe designs, Chanel tweed suits, Loro Piana and Zegna black and navy cashmere, styled with Ralph Lauren belts, Valentino’s Rockstud stilettos, vintage Dior, Hermes bags and current season’s YSL bags. For men, Golden Goose and Valentino trainers were a feature, highlighting a strong intersection between fashion, art, and entertainment.
Emerging Artists to Watch
One of the stand-out presentations was by recent Royal Academy Schools graduate, Jenkin van Zyl. The multimedia installation titled Sweat Carousel features an immersive installation, centred around film. A seemingly innocent sauna is transformed into a gruesome sweat extraction factory with disturbing pink bodily fluids coursing around its walls though dispenser taps. Inside, the film transports viewers into a dystopian performance in which this hallucinogenic elixir hydrates a manic go-go dance performance, enacted by a monstrous artist-doppelgänger.
Indigenous and Primordial Aesthetic
Smoke section was dedicated to indigenous and diasporic artists from Global South working with predominantly clay and influenced by pre-colonial ceramics, echoing this year’s Venice Biennale focus on indigenous artists. The section was curated by Pablo José from Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Smoke emphasised expanding the fair to new geographies and broadening the inclusive spirit of London, a place where many internationals come to study, live and work. The beautifully organised space, divided by pale blue curtains encourages the amalgamation of various perspectives and cultural influences to experience ceramics in a new light.
Featured artists include Lucía Pizzani, a Venezuelan artist, creating guardian-like sculptures reflecting spirit-like imagery within natural forms, exploring the interconnectivity across plant and animal worlds.
Karla Ekaterine Canseco, a Los Angeles-born and Mexico City-based artist, creates sculptures inspired by the history and mythology of the xoloitzcuintli, an ancient breed of Mexican dog given by Xolotl, Aztec god of fire and death, to Indigenous people. She is interested in clay’s ability to carry information from the past into the present. Canseco covers her sculptures in oil, a vital fluid of a trans-historical organism as well as a symbol of the constancy of both destruction and creation.
Noé Martínez, indigenous Mexican artist, explores post-conquest Mexico through inspired by pre-conquest Huastecan pottery and its resulting displacements. As a narrative counterpoint, Martínez’s paintings on unstretched cotton draw from pictorial storytelling traditions of post-conquest Mexico, depicting historical instances of displacement. For Martínez, acknowledging the traditions, and tragedies of the past are part of an ongoing, and active healing ritual.
Solo Presentations Highlights
A truly special presentation at Frieze Masters was dedicated to Youngsook Park, a pioneering feminist photographer who emerged in the male-dominated Korean photography scene of the 1960s. Her recently rediscovered works feature portraits, landscapes, and scenes of post-war Korean life from a feminist perspective and capture the modern streets of Seoul and women’s lives, challenging traditional gender representation and sexual identities.
A more contemplative and spiritual booth was adorned with Lee Bae, an artist recognised for his monochromatic practice of utilising charcoal and abstract forms. Lee’s work resonates with themes of life and death, absence and presence, light and shadow, form, and emptiness. These eternal topics attracted audiences who lingered in the booth to appreciate the message and the form.
Internationally recognised artist, Leiko Ikemura explores themes of transition and sexuality, reflecting on the feminine body from its position in history and mainstream contemporary culture by challenging artistic traditions and disrupting social standards. Focusing on the innocence of childhood, Ikemura’s female spirits are defiant and independent, yet fragile and ethereal, with a power to exist within multiple worlds, between dreaming and waking states.
Trend Forecast for 2025
Art developments have profound creative influence that will inspire and shape upcoming fashion seasons. With designers like Andreas Kronthaler, Raf Simons, Tom Ford, Pierpaolo Piccioli and Dries Van Noten in attendance, we should anticipate bolder, more experimental runway presentations in 2025 and an increased emphasis on collaboration with artists, enriching the narrative of luxury fashion through the lens of artistic and cultural relevance.
@unprofessionalexandra
Alexandra Saushkina is a lecturer @iLA and researcher, she lives in London.
