The second instalment of our Fashion Fetish season - examining a female viewpoint on the relationship between clothes and fetishism - launches on Monday 2 April 2012. Twisting away from fashion film, artist Rei Nadal offers a unique take on the series' theme by curating the SHOWstudio Tumblr for a one-week period. Her work juxtaposes found imagery with phrases and self-portraits - postmodern poetry for the visual age - fuelled in this instance by a selection of objects, cosmetics and fashion items delivered daily to her home. Including esoteric items alongside fashion pieces from world-renowned designers, these selections are merely propositions rather than impositions on Nadal's work: she can choose to incorporate these into her work or not according to her creative urges with each daily selection available for twenty-four hours only (09:00 CET - 09:00 CET). Nadal will also interact with the viewing audience via the 'Ask' feature on Tumblr. Tune in from Monday to see the concept unfold.

SHOWstudio Shop’s latest exhibition Selling Sex opened Thursday evening at 1-9 Bruton Place. Though Selling Sex is, after all, the world’s oldest profession, this exhibition shies away from the cliched images of male-expressed female sexuality found everywhere from prostitution to pornography to fashion photography, exploring the feminine nude from an entirely female perspective. Born from the exasperation that despite performing two-thirds of the world's work and producing half of its food, women only earn 10% of overall global income and own 1% of all property, SHOWstudio Shop hosts work from all-female photographers, filmmakers, sculptors, designers, jewellers and artists including Sarah Lucas, Betony Vernon, Kim McCarty and Inge Jacobsen. Confronted by a vision of women's bodies freed from the voyeuristic overtones of a male dominated art world, guests at last weeks opening were greeted by Una Burke's RE.TREAT #7 and #5; a leather and brass hanging suit sculpted into a position of submission and worship. Our opening night was expertly illuminated by French photographer and stylist Marianne Maric's Lamp Girl, wearing a lampshade dress lit from within by a bulb turned on and off by the pull of a cord and the whims of our guests. Playful and provocative, Selling Sex gives a unique platform to female voices relishing their sexuality but refusing to be solely defined by gender.

Selling Sex is at SHOWstudio Shop, 1-9 Bruton Place until 1 June 2012.

When does sweetness become sickly? Furthermore, when does it become sick? With a Spring/Summer 2012 season awash in pastels and marzipan-hued femininity from designers as diverse as Marc Jacobs, Giles Deacon, Miuccia Prada and Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci, our latest Behind The Seams article critiques the pastels and peplums, the ruffles and flounces, and the vision of woman proposed. Examining the intricacies of the current fashion world, exploring both the concepts behind and the messages given off by this new trend for sickly sweet vulnerability, fashion director Alexander Fury questions exactly what we'll end up with after the sugar rush subsides. 

Stylists have ruled supreme in the SHOWstudio DJ booth this week. On Monday the ever irreverent Carine Roitfeld offered up her favourite tracks. Mimicking her effortless french chic meets rock chick look Roitfeld interspersed classic french sounds from Serge Gainsbourg with rebellious beats from Sid Vicious and David Bowie - the perfect tribute to her famous sartorial panache. This Friday we leave Paris for London, with a mix from Brit stylist Anna Trevelyan. The creative consultant eschews current hits or new underground sounds, instead opting for sounds straight from the nightclub dance-floor. With everything from Gala's nineties anthem Freed from Desire to Ibiza classic Every Time We Touch by Cascada, you can look forward to the ideal accompaniment to a Friday night in London.

Kim McCarty's paintings of fabricated figures and elements of nature are subtle, translucent and absolutely mesmerizing. Young bodies emerge from washes of paint and vulnerable subjects stand stoically in puddles of colour. McCarty uses a wet in wet technique that allows pigments to run into one another and form spontaneous pools of colour combinations, the process of her rapidly created works are analogous to the flash of time that is portrayed in the work. As Hammer Museum Curator Claudine Isé notes, McCarty's subjects 'appear to be fading away before our eyes.' Kim McCarty's piece, Tilt, sexualises the depicted characteristic nymphet through the liquidity of her artistic process. The innocent female body is brought to life by the fluidity of the brushstroke and McCarty's language of colour.

Selling Sex and Fashion Fetish - Nick Knight and Ruth Hogben's 2008 fashion film Make Up Your Mind could slot neatly into either of those categories. Undoubtedly a fetish object - and the most fashionable anti-fashion statement for some time - Maison Martin Margiela's 'Wig-Coat' from the house's Spring/Summer 2009 'retrospective' collection is the star of this oddly seductive and strangely surreal film short, also analysed in text.