Odyssey 2026: a guided visit to the Contemporary Wardrobe.

As part of Odyssey 2026, we are stepping inside the Contemporary Wardrobe archive for a special guided visit exploring the many lives that clothes can take on — from street and subculture to character and screen.

Contemporary Wardrobe is a working archive of over 20,000 garments documenting the emergence of teenage identity after the Second World War and the successive waves of subculture that followed, from early youth movements through mods, punk, new wave, rave culture, and contemporary street style.

Rooted in rebellion and self-expression, the garments celebrate working-class creativity, underground subcultures, and LGBTQ+ communities as vital forces in shaping modern fashion and culture.  Featuring individual archives and garments connected to the figures and spaces that defined it, among them Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, SEX and Seditionaries, Michael Hochong, Leigh Bowery, Sebastian Horsley, Rachel Auburn. These are clothes that challenged authority, signalled belonging, and articulated identity. Today they serve as living references for contemporary storytelling across film, television, music, and fashion.

Established in 1978 by Roger K. Burton, Contemporary Wardrobe is a not-for-profit organisation with a commitment to preserve, promote and broaden access to the archive for research and inspiration, ensuring that these clothes are widely accessible as a valuable cultural resource.

Led by Contemporary Wardrobe archivists Sofia and Liberty, the visit will give us an opportunity to look closely at garments from the collection and discover the stories, cultural moments and identities they carry.

What can a garment tell us about a character before they speak? How can clothing preserve a particular moment in cultural history? And what happens when fashion becomes cinema — and cinema, in turn, shapes the way we remember fashion and culture?

For this year’s festival theme #Fashion: cinema as fashion, we are inviting a small group of filmmakers, producers, students and emerging creatives to join us behind the archive doors and experience these connections first-hand.

👗 7 October 2026 | 14:00–15:00
📍 Contemporary Wardrobe | London
🎟️ Limited spaces

Sign up today.

Convened by Yuki Li, Outreach and Marketing at Odyssey 2026.

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🎬 Odyssey 2026 | #Fashion: cinema as fashion
📅 28 September - 10 October 2026
🇬🇧 Online & in cinemas across the UK
🔗odysseychinesecinema.uk | @odysseyccs