There are few places as confronting as a dressing room on the street. Those claustrophobic booths where fluorescent lights, inadequate curtains and the feeling of being surveilled in one’s surroundings make a person uniquely vulnerable to their own reflection. And yet the 28-year-old stylist Lara McGrath happily spending hours at a time on these soulless and soulless battlefields, reworking cheap, unremarkable bits of fast fashion into the sort of avant-garde creations that wouldn’t look out of place in a Comme des Garçons or All-in presentation. “It’s a strange environment,” she says. “You’re basically forced to go naked in public, and the lighting will either make you look amazing or terrible. Gosh, people would be pissed if they knew what I was actually doing in there.”

McGrath, who is from Bolton, dropped out of college and moved to London five years ago to pursue a full-time career as a model. (“The Megabus life,” she says, “wasn’t for me.”) She has since grown a cult following among fashion insiders for posting spontaneous, unvarnished self-portraits on Instagram while wearing upside-down outfits. that makes River Island look like Rick Owens and Primark, yes, Primarni. Her grid shows that even the most unwelcoming fitting rooms can be the site of radical change for those curious enough to see halter necks in leather pants and loins in slip dresses. “I’ve always liked flipping clothes,” she adds. “I remember wearing my brother’s flannel shirt as pants at the Arndale Center when I was a teenager, and I just thought it was so iconic. Like, ‘Wow, everyone’s going to think these are the coolest harem pants.’ I lived for it even though there was a gaping head hole between my legs.” A star was born.

The images McGrath creates are an antidote to the tedium of self-conscious mirror selfies proliferating on Instagram. Within each entry is a heightened sense of art, of fashion performance that appeals to nostalgics like me. “I was obsessed with America’s Next Top Model as a child, she says. “I used to say, ‘Mom, can you see me smiling with my eyes?’ It’s now the most problematic show of all time, but it’s definitely informed the poses I do.” (NOTE: no one has ever been inspired to work in fashion because of something as serious as Phantom thread.) “I try not to over-intellectualize what I do, because fashion is supposed to be fun,” McGrath continues. “But I’d like to think that there’s also an element of chicness, a flavor, an essence of height. Even if I wear shoes as a top, I still make beautiful pictures. I think that’s the ‘diamond in the rough’ thing “. That’s the allure of not knowing what it is you’re looking at.”

I saw McGrath enjoying a cocktail outside Shreeji News not long after this conversation. She wore a t-shirt as a bolero. The irreverence with which she dresses has spawned collaborations with independent titles such as Confused and More or lessand retailers such as Our Legacy and Aro Archive. Then followed a consulting gig Dilara Findikogluwith which she deconstructed and reconstructed menswear into boudoir-esque womenswear for autumn/winter 2024. The industry’s eyes zoom in. “I’ve always taken these self-portraits, and as I got more followers, strangers started approaching me with compliments about my work, and then I started thinking, ‘wait, maybe I’m… an artist?’ And that one Vivienne Westwood the team used to take pictures of my clothes when I was going into the casting. I found it validating.” (One fan commented on a recent upload with an unrelated, “Vivienne would have loved you.”)

The browsing, fitting and shooting process will take McGrath an entire afternoon to complete. “I never have a plan,” she says. “I go in, look for colours, fabrics or textures that I might like and then take four or five of the same fabric into the changing rooms to create a new silhouette. I’m so paranoid that the staff are like, ‘What wrong with this woman trying on six dresses in six different sizes?” I must look crazy.” It seems we all have our own crosses – or offensively bright number plates – to bear when facing ourselves in the glare of a public dressing room. “But the funny thing is: I never buy anything on the high street or any of the stuff I make these creations with. It’s just a fleeting moment that lives and dies in the same space. I would never shame people who buy fast fashion though, because I’m from a working class background and most of what I wore growing up was from bloody Asda.” It’s a point worth remembering: it’s not about the clothes – or the label sewn inside them – but the attitude with which they’re worn.Even high street can look like haute couture.