Night Flowers: From Avant-Drag to Extreme Haute-Couture

If one picture is worth a thousand words then Night Flowers would be five complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Damien Frost provides the reader with photography of aspects of fashion and style that boggle the mind yet broaden the spectrum when it comes to what is considered or defined as fashion.

This is a book that should have been coffee table size due to the quality of photos and the absolutely stunning subjects. For some readers, the book will be dismissed as glorifying something that goes against the grain or is incomprehensible, but Damien Frost has swung open the door and exposed a part of fashion and life that might be considered its nadir when in actuality it might be its apex. Marinate on that thought.

“Night Flowers isn’t in common use, but it’s a poetic way to describe those people who constitute the more colorful elements of London’s alternative club, queer, performance and arts scene,” writes Damien Frost.

The reader is catapulted head first into a world that will be alien to most but yet this reviewer’s fashion history caused reactions such as profoundly inspiring, brilliant, horrifying, genius, enlightening, and some might say grotesque. The point here is that Night Flowers is a visual exploration, as well as a feast, by a

photographer who took one photo every day for one year.

There is little text to be found here, but Frost’s introduction is far more adequate than most since in his abbreviated verbiage, he more than gives you the rasion d’etre for this incredible book as well as the parameters that were set for each photo. It is provocative and possibly shocking to some but for the seasoned fashionphile this is a book that will give you great pause when you grasp the plethora of fashion influences and influencers present on these pages.

Would this reviewer recommend the book? The answer is unequivocally yes as its appeal is multifaceted, which means it is not just limited to what some might call drag queen drama. Night Flowers is about fashion, photography, self-expression, and innovation, and to think otherwise is to expose one’s less than fully formed fashion I.Q.