Gareth Pugh’s This Bright Land Festival Should Be On Your Radar This Summer

Gareth Pugh is a showman. For many years as a designer, he captivated the world with his extravagant seasonal presentations, which celebrated his avant-garde approach to fashion. Now, with his husband Carson McColl – a writer, artist and activist with whom Gareth founded the independent creative studio Hard + Shiny – he embarks upon a spectacular new project that’s bigger and more ambitious than anything he’s done before. “It’s a beast,” Gareth tells British Vogue.

Introducing This Bright Land, an annual summer festival taking place from 1 to 29 August at Somerset House. “We want to bring lots of people together and create a space for conversation, because we get the sense that [during the pandemic] there were all these different issues that people were dealing with across the country, but no one was talking with each other,” says Carson.

With 29 days to play with, they tapped into their respective networks to help build the programme. Kartel Brown, a prominent member of the Voguing scene, Kayza Rose, founder of BLM Fest, and Jo Cunningham-Alloway and June Lam, representatives of We Exist, helped kickstart the planning.

The line-up is mega, to say the least. “I hope that each time [people] come, there’s going to be something different,” shares Pugh. Without giving too much away, there’s a Clubhouse designed by Automated Architecture where workshops will be held, summer skating, a sensory Wonder Garden hosted by Jo Malone, live music, treasure hunts, Sunday street parties, and a world food market with culinary delights from Black Eats LDN and cocktails by Bombay Sapphire. For downtime, there are spaces dedicated to wellness and self-care. The pièce de résistance? A 35-metre observation wheel offering views across the city.

The weekends are where it’s at. Expect Friday takeovers from Daytimers, Nine Nights, ESEA Sisters and Movimientos, and Saturday open-air Vogue Balls hosted in collaboration with Vogue Rites – the finale of which aims to be the largest open-air Vogue Ball in UK history on 27 August. “We essentially want to make it feel very open to everybody,” says Gareth, who name checks his partners MAC Cosmetics, Jo Malone, Estée Lauder, Forest Essentials, Clinique, Bobbi Brown, Dr.Jart+, Aveda and Origins for helping to make it happen.

The end goal? “What we want people to take away from it is a sense of hope,” notes Carson, who sees This Bright Land as a “celebration of our resilience.” Gareth couldn’t agree more: “I think it’s something we all need right now.”