A shape-shifter on Savile Row
Cindy Sherman has unveiled the first photographic works from her new Fabric Matrons series at Hauser & Wirth in London. The exhibition, on show at the gallery’s Savile Row address until 23 December, presents a cast of female characters swathed in opulent fabric and laden with jewellery. It is the American artist’s latest examination of identity, glamour and the performance of womanhood, themes she has pursued across a five-decade career.
Sherman has always worked as her own model. Using prosthetics, wigs, make-up and digital tools, she builds personas that echo figures from cinema and everyday life, from the society hostess to the restless housewife. Her method keeps the artifice on show: a wig sits slightly askew, foundation cracks across a thickly made-up face, and the occasional safety pin holds a dress together. The seams are part of the point.
From a newsstand in the Hamptons
The spark for Fabric Matrons came from an unlikely place. Sherman came across a glossy magazine at a store in the Hamptons, its pages filled with women of her own generation whose lined faces had been smoothed into flawlessness. She has described wanting to recreate their glamour in tactile form, presenting a different face to the world while keeping the effort visible.
The resulting untitled photographs, dated 2026, show women draped in thick swathes of material, reclining before hanging reams of cloth or posing for the camera in jewels. The series considers what it means to age, and the choices women make to embrace it, mask it or make the best of it.
Chanel cloth and careless styling
For the new works, Sherman was invited by Chanel to use its fabrics and jewellery. The house’s tweeds, woven through with glinting gold threads, sequins and slivers of leather, dominate the series, clashing in pattern and texture from one frame to the next. The styling is deliberately slapdash: bows are tied roughly, hems are frayed, and tailoring gives way to shapeless gowns that would suit an aristocrat as readily as a peasant.
A partnership built over more than a decade
The collaboration extends a relationship that began between 2010 and 2012, when Sherman’s characters wore gowns from the Paris house’s archive for an earlier photographic series. The new works trade couture polish for something more confrontational, setting the richness of the material against the casual way it is worn.
Faces that refuse to be smoothed
The tension at the heart of Fabric Matrons sits in the faces. Some of Sherman’s characters appear almost airbrushed, their complexions youthfully clear, while others gaze straight into the camera with skin criss-crossed by lines, emphasised by tight portrait crops. The contrast presses at the retouching culture that first prompted the series.
Sherman has said the work has moved beyond beauty. “I think it’s showing these characters’ neuroses, probably my own, and similar to many women my age,” she explained. The statement frames the series as both portrait and confession, one woman’s inventory of the faces women are expected to wear as the years pass.
How to see it
Cindy Sherman runs at Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London, until 23 December. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 6pm, and admission is free.