Sinéad O’Dwyer put sex workers front and centre at London Fashion Week
On Monday night, if you were lucky enough to get your hands on a ticket to Irish designer Sinéad O’Dwyer’s London Fashion Week presentation, you’d have been met with quite the show. Sitting on hay bales among long brown grass and pastel wildflowers, and dressed in O’Dwyer’s signature designs from her SS25 collection — shibari-inspired harnesses, playful puff dresses in waxed cotton, and distressed knitwear — three pairs of performers spent hours passionately kissing. As well as being the most fun concept at LFW (and the steamiest), the presentation was also pretty groundbreaking because not only were all the performers queer women, but five out of six of them were current or former sex workers, too.
Although the fashion world has long drawn inspiration from the sex industry, its obsession with sex work culture hasn’t always been welcomed by those it commodifies. Designers from Versace and Vivienne to Mugler and McQueen have explored fetishwear in collections, models have portrayed escorts in (sometimes controversial) campaign films and magazine shoots, and porn stars — occasionally enlisted as muses — have stomped the runways at some of the most memorable shows in history.
But the industry has a habit of glamorising sex work, packaging up its cinematic clichés, and selling them to those who have no idea of the reality of the sex industry and who will never suffer the same censorship and stigmatisation that IRL sex workers or kinksters do. What’s more, beyond the occasional porn star walking the catwalk, fashion has rarely consulted the sex workers it takes inspiration from. Sex sells, then, unless you’re actually selling it.
This is why O’Dwyer’s show was so notable. It wasn’t commodifying sex work — it wasn’t even about sex work — but it put sex workers front and centre, purely for the skills they’ve gained in their chosen career. “Fashion often wants to use the dressing of sex work because it’s edgy, controversial, or cool, but [they want to do it] from a safe distance,” says performer Vex Ashley, the founder of arthouse porn studio Four Chambers. “They want the clout without standing too close. This felt different, we were there to do a job and we were valued for our skilled experience working with bodies, in intimate performance, and in movement and endurance.”
O’Dwyer’s collection, titled Everything Opens to Touch, was first shown at Copenhagen Fashion Week in August, and draws on the concept of emotional intensity — think: having a crush, falling in love, the desire to make shared memories. As per Vogue, it’s informed by a formative year O’Dwyer spent in North Carolina as a teenager, during which she fell in love with a girl for the first time and came out to friends and family. And who better to portray this kind of sensuality than the experts themselves?
“It’s rare for those of us in the [sex] industry to be invited to participate in a way that acknowledges our full humanity and creativity outside of our industry,” performer, pornographer, and photographer Layla Kosima, tells Cosmopolitan UK. “It was empowering to contribute to a performance that celebrates sexuality as an art form, while also being seen for more than just a label.”
The performers were cast by O’Dwyer’s long-time collaborator Emma Matell, who enlisted the help of Helena Whittingham, the founder of Lover Management, a creative agency specialising in intimacy and the erotic. “Emma explained the concept for the show and how they wanted to find people who could portray this kind of intimacy authentically, which is where Lover comes in,” explains Whittingham, “We were brought on to seek out sex workers for their ability to embody that level of rawness, and the result was something truly special.”
Once the performers were cast — a process that didn’t actually involve kissing — they undertook intimacy exercises and rehearsals, as well as consent workshops before the show with Matell’s movement director Grace Nicol. “As a porn director, I really appreciated the use of intimacy coordination checks before the show,” says Kosima. “They reassured us that we could step away at any time if we felt uncomfortable. Knowing that the team prioritised our comfort made the experience all the more positive.”
In total, reveals Kosima, the performers kissed for one and a half hours each, split into three parts — the first kiss was 15 minutes, then 45 mins, and then 30 mins. “It was intense and felt deeply intimate,” she continues. “I didn’t take my eyes off [my performance partner] Venus the entire time, so I was completely unaware of the audience around us. I totally lost track of time. It felt both endless and like it flew by in a matter of minutes.”
“Kissing Layla was a lot of fun,” adds Venus, the founder of sex worker-led events organisation Sex and Rage. “Tumbling in the hay and getting it stuck in our hair and clothes was really cute and added to the fun. We really had a giggle.”
Sinéad O’Dwyer is no stranger to pushing boundaries. The Irish designer has long been a champion of diversifying Fashion Week, sending models of all body types and abilities down the runway in clothes that accentuate the beauty of the body in all its forms. Her original SS25 show marked the first time a blind model, Lucy Edwards, ever walked at Copenhagen Fashion Week, as well as for a London brand. O’Dwyer once told Hero Magazine that she wants “people to feel they don’t have to be thankful for inclusion, that they’re not there as an afterthought or a trend, but because they’re allowed to be”.
“That quote really resonated with me,” Kosima tells Cosmopolitan UK. “She brought that same mindset to working with sex workers during London Fashion Week. It didn’t feel performative or tokenistic. Instead, we were treated as integral parts of the project, and that level of respect and intention made her the perfect collaborator for this performance.”
Plus, adds MilkMaiden, an assistant producer and resident artist at sex worker-led arts company Sexquisite: “Sex workers come in so many shapes, sizes, genders, and colours — if you’re going to have a cast of all sex workers, you have to have outfits that look hot on every body type. Sinéad’s collection has something for everyone.”
As with all trailblazing art, there’s already been a fair amount of backlash to O’Dwyer’s show online. “People have labelled it ‘porn’ and accused it of ruining the art,” says Kosima. “Sinéad is a queer person, who uses her own life experiences and identity as a reference for her clothes and this performance; I think the public completely missed that. Sadly, any woman who is confident in her body and openly expresses her sexuality often faces this kind of shaming. It’s even worse when you’ve been a sex worker — people tend to reduce you to that identity alone, overlooking the full person behind it.”
Nonetheless, the performers — who also include non-sex worker Shireen and Sabrina Jade from East London Strippers Collective — are still on a high from Monday night. If the show helps challenge some people’s negative views about sex work, then that’s great. It would be even better, says MilkMaiden, “if the audience feels inspired by the fact that the body they were looking at belonged to a sex worker, maybe they’d feel inspired to donate to SWARM, email their MP, vote against the Nordic Model, and/or correct their friend when they call us ‘prostitutes’ or compare us to victims of trafficking”.
Oh and don’t forget the artistry — not just of O’Dwyer, but the performers, too. “Sex work is more than a label,” concludes Kosima. “There’s creativity, agency, and dignity in it. I want audiences to recognise that intimacy and sexuality can exist within art, and that sex workers deserve to be seen beyond stigma or preconceived judgments.”
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