Rooted in his Essex upbringing, Joshua Cornwell is a womenswear designer whose practice interrogates ideas of tackiness, taste hierarchy and hyper-femininity within British culture.
Drawing from the visual language of false eyelashes, hair extensions, nightlife glamour and the women he grew up around, his work examines the performance of femininity while queering the rigid gender expectations embedded within Essex identity and broader British archetypes.
A graduate from the prestigious Central Saint Martins BA Womenswear programme, Cornwell approaches fashion through narrative, autobiography and cultural observation.
His graduate collection, Cinch, explored his experience of growing up queer in Essex through a body of work informed by Facebook imagery, interviews, Bratz dolls found on eBay and self-documentation. By embodying the Essex archetype himself ; stumbling in stilettos, wearing cropped puffers and exaggerated silhouettes on a bald, masculine-presenting body. He created garments that examined the tension between aspiration, performance and belonging.
Working across fashion, sculpture and image-making, Cornwell creates garments that occupy a space between wearable object and cultural artefact. His practice often employs assemblage, reconstructing found garments and materials into sculptural forms that hold memory, transforming pre-existing clothing . Through exaggerated proportion and silhouette, he challenges conventional notions of beauty and taste, while exploring how clothing can simultaneously constrict and liberate the body.
His experience working at Maison Margiela under John Galliano further shaped his understanding of fashion as a language of deconstruction, storytelling and reinterpretation. Engaging with the archive of Margiela deepened his interest in garments that subvert expectation, destabilise hierarchy and question the systems through which taste is constructed.
Cornwell ultimately aims to build a practice that extends beyond clothing into art and community engagement, creating work that forms an ongoing cultural dialogue around class, gender, identity and the politics of taste.
Drawing from the visual language of false eyelashes, hair extensions, nightlife glamour and the women he grew up around, his work examines the performance of femininity while queering the rigid gender expectations embedded within Essex identity and broader British archetypes.
A graduate from the prestigious Central Saint Martins BA Womenswear programme, Cornwell approaches fashion through narrative, autobiography and cultural observation.
His graduate collection, Cinch, explored his experience of growing up queer in Essex through a body of work informed by Facebook imagery, interviews, Bratz dolls found on eBay and self-documentation. By embodying the Essex archetype himself ; stumbling in stilettos, wearing cropped puffers and exaggerated silhouettes on a bald, masculine-presenting body. He created garments that examined the tension between aspiration, performance and belonging.
Working across fashion, sculpture and image-making, Cornwell creates garments that occupy a space between wearable object and cultural artefact. His practice often employs assemblage, reconstructing found garments and materials into sculptural forms that hold memory, transforming pre-existing clothing . Through exaggerated proportion and silhouette, he challenges conventional notions of beauty and taste, while exploring how clothing can simultaneously constrict and liberate the body.
His experience working at Maison Margiela under John Galliano further shaped his understanding of fashion as a language of deconstruction, storytelling and reinterpretation. Engaging with the archive of Margiela deepened his interest in garments that subvert expectation, destabilise hierarchy and question the systems through which taste is constructed.
Cornwell ultimately aims to build a practice that extends beyond clothing into art and community engagement, creating work that forms an ongoing cultural dialogue around class, gender, identity and the politics of taste.
