During Frieze London 2025, the British capital once again became a stage for art, design, and performance to intersect in striking new ways. Across town, brands and galleries embraced immersive storytelling—turning spaces into living worlds that challenged the boundaries between viewer and participant. From Prada’s poetic exploration of spectatorship to Doowon Lee’s untamed universe at The Twenty Two and Bureau of Innovation’s decadent design debut, London celebrated creativity as experience. Below, Whitewall revisits some of the standout moments of this season’s London Fête.
Prada Mode London: “The Audience” by Elmgreen & Dragset
The Audience is Many__Prada Mode London 2025, Day2; Courtesy of Prada.
At the newly restored Town Hall in King’s Cross, Prada presented the thirteenth edition of Prada Mode with Elmgreen & Dragset on October 15 and 16, 2025. Coinciding with Frieze London, The Audience transformed the venue into an immersive cinema exploring spectatorship in the digital age. Inside, a blurred looping film played before hyperrealistic sculptures of cinemagoers, while a lone woman in The Conversation appeared to FaceTime one of the characters—blurring the line between viewer and viewed. The program kicked off with a private dinner and party attended by London’s cultural VIPs, followed by two days of talks, performances, and live music.
Léa Sen_Prada Mode London 2025, Day 2; Courtesy of Prada.
Highlights included lectures by Kirsty Sedgman, Elizabeth Diller, and Sir Isaac Julien; conversations with Shona Heath, James Price, and Paolo Moretti; spoken word and DJ sets by James Massiah; and live performances by Lynda Dawn, ENNY, Léa Sen, Tony Njoku, Bendik Giske, and DJ BOBBY. Prada Mode London redefined spectatorship as a shared and sensory experience.
“Against Nature”: Bureau of Innovation’s Decadent Design Debut
Holly Lucas & Sam Henley, BOI Founders, photo by Michael Sinclair.
Within the gilded rooms of a private Mayfair residence, Bureau of Innovation (BOI) made its London debut with “Against Nature,” a design exhibition inspired by Joris-Karl Huysmans’ 19th-century novel of the same name. The show invited designers and artists to embrace material excess and theatrical craftsmanship, reimagining function through indulgence. Works by Sigurd Nis Schelde, LS GOMMA, Agglomerati x Tom Fereday, Jojo Corvaia, and others filled the interiors with sensual tactility and expressive form.
Courtesy of Bureau of Innovation, photo by Michael Sinclair.
Curated in collaboration with Lindon & Co., the exhibition blurred boundaries between art and object—where a sculpted surface or hand-polished curve carried as much emotional charge as a painting. Launching BOI’s No Fixed Address series, “Against Nature” offered an intimate, atmospheric counterpoint to the grand fairs of Frieze and PAD London, reminding audiences that design, too, can be both decadent and deeply human.
The Twenty Two x Doowon Lee: “Untamed” in Mayfair
Courtesy of The Twenty Two.
For Frieze Week, The Twenty Two in Mayfair became the roaming studio of Korean artist Doowon Lee. Curated by Polly-Anna Monckton of ACA Galleries, Untamed transformed the hotel and members’ club into a living, breathing extension of Lee’s practice—where visitors wandered among paintings alive with color, texture, and spirit. Drawing on indigenous materials gathered across Asia—Pakistani wool, Nepalese hemp, Indian khadi cotton—Lee layered gouache, Korean ink, and oil pastel into landscapes of luminous hybridity.
Courtesy of The Twenty Two and artist Dowoon Lee.
Anthropomorphic figures drifted through these scenes, merging fantasy and folklore into something joyful and raw. As Monckton described, Lee’s work “awakens our childlike sense of wonder,” dissolving the line between reality and imagination. On view across The Living Room, The Dining Rooms, and The Artist Studio, Untamed invited Frieze visitors to encounter art as an active presence—one that moved, breathed, and played alongside them.
