Rose Easton celebrates lumps, bumps and offbeat desirability in London

In 1997, Comme des Garçons released a mind- and body-bending collection. ‘Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body’ – affectionately nicknamed ‘Lumps and Bumps’ – radically reimagined the silhouette with the use of unconventional padding and protrusions. In doing so, designer Rei Kawakubo pushed back on deeply set ideals about the human form, rebelling against mainstream notions of femininity and desirability. For east London gallerist Rose Easton, the collection is a defining moment.

'Her clothes make me feel powerful,' Easton said ahead of the opening of her exhibition ‘Lumps and Bumps’ (until 12 December 2026), an homage to the spirit of Kawakubo’s radical designs. 'For want of a better word, a sort of ugliness that a particular flavour of man didn’t get, that perturbed and distanced them. That look has seeped into the contemporary mainstream now, but this was at a time when spray-on denim and Hervé Léger dresses were the thing.'

Easton’s exhibition brings together a selection of contemporary artists to riff on the 1997 collection. In different ways, Dogperson39, Sarah Benslimane, Sylvie Fleury, Charlotte Kingsnorth and Caitlin MacQueen delve into disturbance and protrusion, experimenting with materials that can’t easily be categorised. Fleury’s bodily sculptures seem to be squeezed and inflated, appearing seductive through their blue chrome and polished bronze materiality, but defying traditional anatomy. Kingsnorth’s padded, pale leather stool is fleshy and bulging, disturbing line we might typically draw between the body and the structure that houses it.

At a time of AI and other technology creating veneers and avatars to smooth out our imagined faults, when GLP-1s and body modifications are booming, Easton 'kept thinking about the dissolution of the boundary of the body, between self and other, physical and digital. And I kept returning to this collection and then inevitably, as it happens when you get a worm in the brain, you start seeing it reflected back to you in everything you do.' The collection opens up a broad spectrum of conversations surrounding the politics of the body, from access and inclusion to taste and the designed environment.

Easton has a background in fashion having previously worked with British designer Phoebe English. Dover Street Market, co-founded by Kawakubo, was the first store to buy their debut collection. Easton frequently infuses art exhibitions with fashion in an unpredictable manner. She is intrigued by how clothes, especially from ‘Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body’, can 'act as a structured interface between the body and the world. [Clothing] has the power to modify how we feel about ourselves in relation to that world, and how the world perceives us.' Likewise, she notes, 'artworks can act upon us in a similar way, heightening our awareness of our body in relation to another body or form. We understand these encounters through our own felt senses: a sculpture tells us how to move around it; a painting directs our gaze.'

The gallerist’s own bodily experience also feeds into the show. As a new mother, watching her form change and grow in ways that can at times feel alien, she felt a renewed kinship with the 1997 collection. 'You become so overtly “woman” that it’s almost perverse,' she said. 'Western society still hasn’t quite worked out what to do or how to behave around pregnant mothers… I was fascinated by the ways in which men couldn’t look at me, would avert their gaze and were somewhat horrified by this bulge, this protrusion. Although not the driving force, Rei’s collection and subsequent conversations with the artists were a way in which to navigate this experience.'

‘Lumps and Bumps’ at Rose Easton until 12 December 2026

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