Naomi and Goldie hit south London in Martine Rose – I-D
Wed 7 Sep
It takes a truly special affair to lure Londoners from their barbecues on a warm Sunday evening, but Martine Rose is a truly special woman. And so, in June, for the designer’s return to the runway after a pandemic-enforced pause, her devoted crew turned up en masse – some slightly sunburnt – to a sticky-floored, latex-lined cavern situated in one of Vauxhall’s infamous railway arches. The space had been home to a branch of Chariots Spa, London’s legendary gay sauna, until lockdown had forced it to shutter its rainbow-decked doors. “It was the last Chariots to close down,” Martine sighs over a cup of tea and a cigarette outside her Holloway studio. “And it felt like that was a really important space for loads of my friends when we were growing up.”
In that spirit, the choice made perfect sense. Inclusion and community have always been at the heart of Martine’s world, and accordingly her shows have always invited her fashion family into intimate spaces across the capital (“I’d consider myself a true Londoner,” she laughs. “I grew up in South, lived in East, and now I’m North.”). Her last show, in 2019, took us inside her daughter’s primary school in Kentish Town, where we were seated alongside teachers on wooden benches; the year before, to a Chalk Farm cul- de-sac where local residents were sat next to the likes of Virgil Abloh and Luka Sabbat to witness her “love letter to London.” But this time, she was drawn to the mysterious allure of a space she’d never been allowed inside; to the sexual tension which proliferated there, and the home it offered men marginalised from the mainstream.