The Thousands

As far as things go, war is pretty bad. It’s up there with dropping your gelato and not being able to unleash the 20-second-rule cos it fell on a syringe. It’s almost as horrifying as accidentally forwarding a nasty email about someone, to that someone. It’s not quite as yuck as most advertising, but it’s close.

I joke! War is worse than all those things, way worse. And so you may think it makes for an unusual choice to theme a pop-up vintage clothing shop around. But before you stampede in waving your ration coupons and demanding blood-splattered combat fatigues in every colour, keep reading! The lovely Fuller sisters of concept collective bams & ted are more about making war on thoughtless clothing choices, rather than, say, the thoughtless deployment of troops.

Month one of their two-month residency at Kaleidoscope’s little cottage gallery in Paddington finds them bunking down with Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, his lady lovers, their cotton socks, and sexy pleats. They tell me it’ll be like that movie Edge of Love with the sound turned down (cos it’s pretty but really shit). Velvet finery will jostle with woollen blankets, florals with bomb-fleeing boots in a recreated wartime world spanning the Welsh coastline to London’s underground.

Month two is a war we can all understand: one waged on mediocrity. Tim Burton’s neo-gothic Edward Scissorhands is the general of an army of pastels, colour-blocking and suburban malaise. If your hair is made up of a grassy green hedge, proceed round these parts with care.

Who said war was good for nothing?