Sorcha Dallas

Linder Sterling is the artist best known for her scalpel collages that graced some of the most famous record sleeves of the punk era, including the Buzzcock’s 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Richard Nicoll is the Australian-bred London-based designer whose grown-up-cool collections get more accomplished by the season. Quite possibly the last creative couple you’d expect to find in cahoots? That’s what makes their collaboration on Nicoll’s a/s 2009 collection all the more intriguing.

‘I wanted to work with Linder because I had an immediate connection with her,’ says Nicoll. He was fascinated by the lingerie references in her work - where Sterling overlays black and white 1960s soft-porn images with giant irises. These powerfully beautiful - if kinkily perverse - pictures have been used as prints on loose dresses, simple tops and prim macs. ‘I thought that creating utilitarian lingerie was the perfect way to reflect society’s vulnerability at the moment, by exposing the inside out,’ says Nicoll.

It’s the first time Sterling, who lives in Lancashire, ‘in the village of Heysham, precisely between a view of the Cumbrian Hills and a nuclear reactor’ as she puts it, has collaborated with a fashion designer. ‘I was intrigued to work with Richard,’ she says. ‘In the wrong hands, my ideas could have reduced to gimmick and sensation.’ No sign of that here. This collection - Nicoll’s best yet - packs an almighty punch, but you’ll have to wait until the a/w 2009 collections hit the stores at the end of the summer before you can lay your hands on it.