Natasha Zinko’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection was held in a multistorey underground concrete monolith structure beneath the streets of Angel, London. As ever, Zinko’s show was for the party, as Buckshot, shortly following an opening by a sober opera singer with two ladies on his arms, MC’d the heavy Auto-Tune, bass and trap beats that reverberated through the glorified basement.
The looks were revealed from compartments framed by concrete pillars across the venue. A little like a video on a phone or laptop. This is where Zinko’s collaboration and muse for the collection comes into the picture, OnlyFans. The frames in this concrete structure created a panopticon-esque appearance. It layered the show with something beyond the lives we portray on screen: the mass surveillance bombarding our online and offline world.
OnlyFans is a strange and controversial company to collaborate with; no doubt to spur on Zinko’s classic stuntish nature she pulls in her collections and shows. “This collection is actually about the pay-per-view,” Zinko said in a quick interview for Rain. Pay-per-view is part of OnlyFans’ streaming model that adopts a single payment for a single broadcast from performers rather than monthly subscriptions.
The core of this collection is performance and the audience, whoever they may be, and the OnlyFans collaboration is a vehicle for delivering this concept. It is an exploration of character and personality in relation to how we present ourselves and how we are watched through life.
“The casting takes so long, but the people are so nice and so different and they represent different kinds of people in our society.” Zinko’s shows are always full of characters, real and fictional, and her star-studded casting has never worked better than now to represent her concept by using different characters across the pop-culture zeitgeist over the years (Katie Price, Kelly Osbourne, Buckshot, Kershaw, Drea de Matteo).
“We are performing some characters, some of them are authentically these characters, some are not, but we use clothes to change our appearance.”
