Three years in, Veuve Clicquot’s ‘Widow Series’ has become an autumn staple of London’s cultural calendar. Invented to celebrate the pioneering champagne icon Madame Clicquot, who was widowed at just 27, the immersive art event is handed to a different creative team each year, with the aim of fashioning a night to remember while raising money for AIDS charity Amfar.
Last year’s FKA Twigs-curated installation was a hit, selling out in 20 minutes and garnering over 11 million online impressions. With a lot to live up to, this year’s team was in safe hands, with style doyenne and iconic fashion editor Carine Roitfeld steering the ship alongside creative director Patrick Kinmonth.
The longtime collaborators, who first worked together on a Mario Testino photo shoot in the 1990s, are a formidable force, as well as being fierce friends. ‘Patrick is the most generous storyteller,’ says Roitfeld. ‘And this was a big production – which is putting it mildly.’
Carine Roitfeld at the entrance to ‘Seven’
Entitled ‘Seven’, and themed around the deadly sins, guests are taken on a vice-laden journey across four floors of raw concrete in an expansive subterranean Islington venue, journeying into the pits of Dante’s Inferno. It’s a bold move for Roitfeld, a self-confessed ‘pages person’, to work on an installation of this scale. ‘I work in magazines – this is totally new for me,’ she says. ‘So I’ve brought a few of my fashion family in to help.’
Notable collaborators have shown up in force. Guests feel the furore of wrath through the eyes of Fendi and we’re toyed with by lusty models in red PVC courtesy of Atsuko Kudo, all the while being satiated with VC Extra Brut by ‘widow’ waitresses dressed in black lace by Tom Ford.
The melding of art installation and ‘the fashion world’ is something Kinmonth has enjoyed seeing develop throughout his career. ‘The change has been tremendously slow but absolutely permanent,’ he says. ‘Fashion is no longer regarded as something superficial, where clothes just come at the end. People understand that clothes are a manifestation of deep cultural processes. They are extremely legible and can be experimented with in these kinds of settings.’
The costuming, set design and performance act as the crystal glass in which the champagne sits – with the latter remaining very much the star of the show. In a final act of pure, unadulterated extravagance (and a full embodiment of gluttony) guests are invited to chuck their champagne glasses over a ledge and watch them fall four stories, creating a mosaic of shards across the floor. If this is Inferno, we want a one way ticket to hell.
The third iteration of Veuve Clicquot’s Widow Series, ‘Seven’ was curated this year by Carine Roitfeld
The Gluttony room featured a glass coffin filled with rotting food
Sloth was represented by a stack of mattresses, with an actor trapped inbetween
INFORMATION
‘Seven’ ran from 20 – 22 October. For more information, visit the Veuve Clicquot website
ADDRESS
17 Islington Green
London, N1 2XH
-
Behind the design of national pavilions in Venice: three studios to knowDesigning the British, Swiss and Mexican national pavilions at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 are three outstanding studios to know before you go
-
Premium patisserie Naya is Mayfair’s latest sweet spotHeritage meets opulence at Naya bakery in Mayfair, London. With interiors by India Hicks and Anna Goulandris, the patisserie looks good enough to eat
-
Discover midcentury treasures in Marylebone with Álvaro by AppointmentLondon is full of sequestered design havens, and Wallpaper* knows them all. Allow us to point you in the direction of Álvaro González’s shop window on Nottingham Place, home to a bonanza of beautiful 20th-century antiques
-
The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt will be shown at Tate ModernThe 42-panel quilt, which commemorates those affected by HIV and AIDS, will be displayed in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in June 2025
-
Meet the Turner Prize 2025 shortlisted artistsNnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa are in the running for the Turner Prize 2025 – here they are with their work
-
‘Humour is foundational’: artist Ella Kruglyanskaya on painting as a ‘highly questionable’ pursuitElla Kruglyanskaya’s exhibition, ‘Shadows’ at Thomas Dane Gallery, is the first in a series of three this year, with openings in Basel and New York to follow
-
The art of the textile label: how British mill-made cloth sold itself to Indian buyersAn exhibition of Indo-British textile labels at the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) in Bengaluru is a journey through colonial desire and the design of mass persuasion
-
Artist Qualeasha Wood explores the digital glitch to weave stories of the Black female experienceIn ‘Malware’, her new London exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, the American artist’s tapestries, tuftings and videos delve into the world of internet malfunction
-
Ed Atkins confronts death at Tate BritainIn his new London exhibition, the artist prods at the limits of existence through digital and physical works, including a film starring Toby Jones
-
Tom Wesselmann’s 'Up Close' and the anatomy of desireIn a new exhibition currently on show at Almine Rech in London, Tom Wesselmann challenges the limits of figurative painting
-
A major Frida Kahlo exhibition is coming to the Tate Modern next yearTate’s 2026 programme includes 'Frida: The Making of an Icon', which will trace the professional and personal life of countercultural figurehead Frida Kahlo
