5 min readThe first thing I notice about Luella Bartley when she pops up on my Zoom screen is her sweater. In the soft light of her spare London art studio, her navy jumper looks to be the perfect weight and cut—not too heavy, perfectly worn in, a little oversized. I think I spot a small hole in her sleeve. I tell her I like her sweater and the little gold chain peeking out from the neckline, and I ask if she’s been thinking about her own relationship to clothing lately, having just mounted an exhibition of paintings featuring her friends and family in their most beloved, well-worn clothes.
The series is titled “Dressing for Pleasure,” on display now at the Kristin Hjellegjerde gallery in London. There are paintings of her son Ned in his track pants and striped shirt and of a dear friend in a grey pinstripe suit with a floral-printed tie and a pair of bright red socks. Bartley captured two women sitting cross-legged wearing heels, one in a suit and the other in a skirt and a striped button-down. These depictions mark a somewhat dramatic shift in her artistic practice, which formerly centered around nudes, intimacy, and the complexities of the female experience.
Untitled 3, 2026 Oil on canvas
“I mean, I’m so boring,” she laughs. “That’s why it’s been quite nice and playful for me to watch other people, because I have stripped myself bare of that kind of expression.” She pauses and looks off screen for a moment. “For me, clothing is a pair of jeans and a jumper, but that is still saying something. It’s probably a statement about not wanting to be seen as something, or it’s a blank canvas in a way. Even when you think you’re trying not to say something, you’re saying a lot.”
It’s been a while since Bartley has telegraphed anything through fashion, at least publicly, but she certainly had an incredible run as a star designer before she entered the world of fine arts. Bartley was a fashion journalist first before attending Central Saint Martins and eventually launching her own label, Luella, in 1999. Her clothes, prim and preppy but with punkish quirk, helped to define a new generation of Brit It girls in the early 2000s. One day, you’d see Sienna Miller wearing a polka dot mini skirt from Luella with her own crumpled vintage shirt, and the next, Alexa Chung heading out to a nightclub in a Luella 1950s-style full-skirted dress with a heart cutout at the chest. Bartley co-designed a sell-out bag for Mulberry in 2002 called the Gisele and later launched a collaboration with Target. She worked as the design director for Marc by Marc Jacobs and cofounded the label Hillier Bartley with her close friend, the designer Laura Hillier.
From left: Untitled 10, 2026, Oil on canvas ; Untitled 13, 2026, Ink on paper
Bartley began painting under unimaginable circumstances after she lost her son Kip to cancer at the age of 18 in 2021. “I was obviously in a lot of emotional pain when I started painting,” Bartley explained. “I had to tear everything down and really go inwards.” In 2024, Bartley began to move away from nudes, working with the choreographer Wayne McGregor, director of the Royal Ballet in London. She drew and photographed the dancers before painting them, finding beauty in the way that their bodies interacted with their clothing as they moved. This was what sparked Bartley’s interest in painting subjects with their clothes on. “After eight hours of rehearsal, their socks were filthy. I saw the way their T-shirts stuck to their sweat; it was very visceral. Painting those dancers really opened up the conversation for me about clothing.” She added, “It’s still always about what the body is doing underneath the clothing and what that’s trying to communicate.”
Luella Bartley at the opening of “Dressing for Pleasure”
Bartley was very clear when she pointed out that these new paintings aren’t about fashion. They aren’t about a brand or a label or a trend or her legacy in the industry. They’re about the purity of getting dressed—the way we instinctually, or accidentally, choose clothes to express ourselves. It’s about the essence and the humanness of style, rather than a conversation about fashion. “I’ve spent 30 years dealing with the idea of what clothes mean,” Bartley said. “The way I designed in the past was very much about narrative, and about character. I think letting that back into my world and my persona has been a really interesting progression for the paintings because spending that much time thinking about clothing, thinking about the narrative of what we’re trying to say about ourselves is really important. It’s always been an important part of my life.”
Up until this point, Bartley was very deliberate about not merging her past with her present, or blending her two practices or fashion design with fine art. “I feel a bit freer with it,” Bartley says of her painting work now. “I’m understanding that creativity doesn’t have to mean one small path. I think before, I was very conscious not to let the paths cross. But all the paintings, from previous paintings to these paintings, they all deal with our need for communication, or my need for communication.”
From left: Untitled 7, 2026, Oil on canvas ; Untitled 8, 2026 Oil on canvas
Bartley smiles often during our conversation, lighting up at the mention of her son Ned, “all dressed up but wearing his dirty, shabby white socks.” She swipes her tussled blond hair across her head as she says, “There are probably not many painters who think as much about putting a tweed suit with a red sock and a pair of Vans.” Bartley notes that all of this work is “about personal style,” adding, “Because fashion can often wear you. It can be a mask or about status, but these paintings aren’t about that. It’s about my friend from Cornwall who has the same old suit he wears all the time.” When Bartley went to paint that friend, he asked if he should put on nicer shoes, but she preferred he keep the Vans on.
Untitled 9, 2026, Oil on canvas
While Bartley has very quietly dipped her toe back into the world of fashion (which she prefers not to speak about at the moment), she is finding joy in the intersection of both her creative paths, and she is eager to get to work on the next series of paintings. “I think I sort of fell into fashion,” she said, tugging at the sleeve of her sweater. “I think I always wanted to do fine art, but back then, I didn’t feel confident enough to do it. Fine art is really intimidating, and I think it’s really interesting to come at it now at my age.” She adds, “I find it a lot easier after the experiences I’ve had. Being a little bit older, being able to look a bit differently at the world, and have a little more confidence.” She smiles, “I don’t really give a fuck what people think; I need to do this.”