FADE IN DECAY was launched by Iris Trika in London Fashion Week with Metamorphosis couture fashion performance. Centre: @isi_or_izzntshe with other performers (photo: Tony Mitchell)
Fade in Decay: Iris Trika, House of Harlot boss and Paris latex couture creator, unveils her new art project
MARCH COVER STORY: Fade in Decay is the name of a new artistic collective led by Iris Trika, the designer behind latex labels House of Harlot and Iris Thespider. It launched during London Fashion Week with Metamorphosis, a couture fashion performance created to showcase the collective’s work to an invited audience. Tony Mitchell visits Iris at her King’s Road atelier, where she explains how the latex scene, the wider fashion scene and current world events have shaped her new project and her thoughts about the future. Includes 30 Metamorphosis images on page 2 and full production team credits on page 3.
Banner: Iris in front of the mural she painted on her studio wall – photo: Tony Mitchell
Fade in Decay is a new project from Iris Trika, launched on February 22 with an art performance called Metamorphosis at The Crypt on the Green in London’s Clerkenwell.
The idea behind Fade in Decay, says Iris, is that the art of what we create is inspired by the eternal beauty of things, even though, when something fades in decay, it’s considered to be dying.
“But,” she elaborates, “just because something is on its journey to ending doesn’t mean that it has to be grim. It can be anything that is considered life.
“You can capture something in the moment of it being alive and be able to express its vibrancy throughout its progress from this state to the last stage of it.
“So the base inspiration behind the techniques and the idea of Fade in Decay is that we choose a certain point in time to capture something with our minds. And we imagine how it is from this point to the end, how it frays slowly with the growing vulnerability and fragility of the material — or our image of it.”
February’s Metamorphosis performance introducing Fade in Decay featured eight male models in elaborate gowns and other latex ensembles, with striking hair and make-up, accessorised with jewellery and other intricate decorative pieces.
The original plan had been to stage the event on February 15 to tie in with Valentine’s weekend, because it was “a project about self-love”. But finding a suitable venue to accommodate the show’s critical ‘performance in the round’ concept took longer than expected, pushing the event back to Feb 22.
Fashion Week date was a mixed blessing
That evening, the performers’ movements around the Crypt’s square floor-space (with the audience seated on all four sides) were choreographed to match the floaty, dreamlike style of the ambient soundtrack.
It was quite different from the fashion presentation style generally experienced by fetish audiences, although it would probably have seemed less unusual to those who move in ‘couture circles’.
On the plus side, having to stage it a week later — bumping it into the middle of London Fashion Week — could have seemed like good fortune. But it was ultimately a mixed blessing as a number of fashion industry collaborators Iris had been expecting to see at the launch didn’t show.
(The fact that there were 17 official London Fashion Week events scheduled for the same evening might have had some bearing on that situation.)
If you didn’t know: Iris Trika is one of that very exclusive group of UK latex designer-makers who, as well as owning or working for regular latex labels, also work with top international fashion and couture brands.
Normally these latex specialists are sworn to secrecy over the precise details of their involvement with ‘big name’ projects.
MAKE IT SNAPPY: Crocodile-print latex two-piece Iris made for Ludovic de Saint Sernin’s Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2025 Couture show
But Iris has posted publicly about an important commission she undertook for January’s Paris Couture Week.
So it’s not a secret that she made the stunning crocodile-print latex outfits for the Ludovic de Saint Sernin-designed Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2025 Couture collection (example above). The fabric itself was produced by Matisse Di Maggio.
And while I was putting this feature together, Iris was back in Paris again for Paris Fashion Week and more (as yet undisclosed) rubbery adventures in the world of high fashion.
Why an art collective as the new project?
But, if you head-up a highly-regarded latex label (she has owned House of Harlot for nine years now) and do regular custom/couture latex work for big fashion names, why would you also want to embark on something as ethereal-sounding as an artistic collective?
“The general idea behind Fade in Decay as a business or a project,” she explains, “is that I’ve seen how hard it is — having worked for myself for the past nine years since I got Harlot — for small creators to be able to do something bigger than themselves.
“Because I have tried so many times to make a bigger show, to make more money and to have a bigger team. But the moment it starts
becoming bigger, it also becomes more detached from the group, from each other.
“And every time, I would fall out with my team, every time we would have really bad fights, arguments and everything. I realised that this was because I was trying to survive and grow.
“I’ve seen that, as a director and as person who has to lead a team, it becomes a bit too impersonal when I have to do things that cut me off from communicating with the members of my team.”
SAVE THE DATE: Invitation to Metamorphosis, Fade in Decay’s debut performance in London
With a smaller team — with a number of independent people working at the same time in the same project — there is, she feels, “more soul”. This, she believes, is preferable to “supporting and creating something that is going to separate people even more”.
“I’d rather put my work and effort into something that is going to bring people closer, because that’s what we need right now. We need to give opportunities to people who don’t have as much power.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have a business that can make enough money seasonally or have a big project — to have a great history that gives me the opportunity to try different things with big groups I work with, or projects with different brands I work with in Paris and so on.
Very skilled creative people still need luck
“I have also seen that there are lots of people who are really skilled and really creative that haven’t had the luck to do this, haven’t had the chance to do this.
“And maybe they will never have it; sometimes you have to be in the right place at the right time to have it. So I feel that whoever has more power is meant to share it and create a better environment for those with less.
“That’s why I’m focusing my energy now on one of my projects to make sure I give back to people who can benefit, grow and connect more with their creative selves through it.
“Fade in Decay is basically a creative project where I direct it but everyone who’s part of it doesn’t have to have their own big business.
“They can be an independent designer or a freelancer or just a person who loves doing creative stuff, and so far it has been running on one-day-a-week meetings and work.”
Having had the experience of different shows for different brands she’s worked with, Iris set out to coordinate a team from different fields with different skills for the Metamorphosis couture fashion performance that launched Fade in Decay.
“We had designers, we had creators, people who do crafty stuff, we had a musician, a videographer who’s working on a documentary, and we had two different people for jewellery and grills [dental jewellery].
“So we try to be a team of different skills and aspects where all the members do something really good independently but can also come together to create a big project.”
But compared with earlier projects of this kind, she points out, “We don’t just bring our stuff together and style it in a nice way. We actually create together as a brand while also keeping our individuality as artists.”
Her role, she says, is essentially project management. “I put many people together. The people who are part of the group would not have the chance to be part of a show. Their products aren’t enough for a full show.
“They would be doing a little bit of content creation for TikTok and Instagram and that would be the most they’d be able to afford.
“Most of them work from home or a shared space. They don’t have the opportunity of the financial background to have something much bigger.”
Running a showroom can be exhausting
Iris says she knows only too well how exhausting it can be as a one-person business “trying to set up a space that feels professional for someone to come into, look at your things, and leave because they just didn’t like it that much”.
“You have to do all this admin, to pay all these bills and do all these different jobs, in order to maintain an image for the people out there just to maybe buy something.
“So I’m taking care of that through this project. I’m creating the website with the products shown at this first event. The fadeindecay.com website, which will go live soon, will provide information about all the people involved in the event, including their contact details.
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