Reviewed by: The List
Review by Jo Laidlaw | 19 February 2024

Fashion is our life, declare Sam and Jen as they vogue their way to the stage. What follows is a breakneck trip through the vagaries of the fashion industry: songs, dances, audience work and heaps of quick changes that signify our collective addiction to the fastest of fashion. All of this aims to explore the inexplicable pull of an industry that thrives on making us feel bad, making us feel good, then making us feel bad all over again. 

If that sounds worthy it’s anything but, thanks to Samantha LeClaire and Jennifer Laycock’s sheer joie de vivre, which means Fashion 4 Passion skillfully treads that awfully fine line of having points to make and things to say, while wrapping the whole thing up in feel-good comedy. It's just really good fun. That means of course there’s a 90s rom com makeover montage (with the entire audience quivering in anticipation of the takes-glasses-off ‘but you’re beautiful moment’). That's followed by the Year 12 drama project (if Mary wore those trousers to the immaculate conception she’d definitely be asking for it) and a comedy shoot-out over modern day slavery.

Confident and quick, the pair are polished and generous with each other and the audience (actually, they’re so adept at crowd work that it would be great to see more of it). Packed with one-liners, jibes at influencer culture (to be fair, rich pickings) and more song and dance routines than you can shake a stick at, you’d have to have a heart of stone (heart of Shein?) to not be won over by this pair of super models.  

FASHION 4 PASSION, Gluttony, until 25 February (not 19 February), 6pm.