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FKA twigs might not have been at the Met Gala 2021, but the performer has been busy whipping up a different kind of fashion project. The artist has been flexing her curation muscle as part of Farfetch’s new photography archive endeavour, entitled The Art of Choice. Guided by the editor Antwaun Sargent, FKA twigs, whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett, delved into Magnum’s unparalleled archive and selected a vibrant series of images that inspired her. The final edit – a paean to offbeat, original style (FKA all over) – has been plastered on a guerrilla-style, 24-hour installation in London.
“I purposely didn’t think too intellectually about my choices and instead opted for images that I either felt personally connected to or [that] evoked an emotion in me,” says the multimedia talent of how she narrowed down Sargent’s initial proposition. “All art is just about feeling something and that’s the most powerful element of these images; it’s like an intense form of people-watching, but we have the clues of what they were actually going through historically.”
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Putting her name to something that felt authentic to her as a Londoner – she moved to the city from Gloucestershire as a teen to pursue dancing – was also paramount. “I added more images of Black women and the queer community to ensure that the London that raised me was represented in my selection,” she explains. “This was important to me, because my own west Indian community and the queer community has always been a safe place for me to truly be myself as a young woman and artist.”
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Having the confidence to be who you are is what shines for FKA twigs when it comes to street style. While she won’t say where she sources her own wardrobe inspiration – “Oooh, that would be telling ;)”, she emails Vogue – she will talk about how she approaches getting dressed. “On a practical level, I love layers that can come off throughout the day to fit different scenarios, from training to a meeting,” she shares. “Being able to turn a hoodie into a skirt layered over trackies, or a jumper into a shrug etc… that’s just the dancer in me I think.”
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On what the princess of art pop – who is incidentally also the industry’s best pole dancer and swordfighter – hopes fellow Londoners take away from her ephemeral exhibit, she muses: “I think that in this current cultural and political climate, it offers some hope that those who lived before us managed to make it through and find light in times of uncertainty or darkness.” If you take one thing away from the many fashion headlines this week, let it be FKA’s quiet conviction that authenticity always wins.
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Find out more about Farfetch’s ‘The Art of Choice’ project, with additional curators Tyler Mitchell and Carl Gerges, with photography by Eve Arnold, Ernest Cole, Bruno Barbey, Chris Steele-Perkins and Herbert List, at Farfetch.com.
