Celebrating a milestone decade of creating fearlessly, Gareth Pugh triumphantly marked the occasion with his return to London, and to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Plunging the room into darkness, the show opened with a film projection of a lone woman bathed in eerie red light, the symbol of both love and war, in a film directed by long-time collaborator Ruth Hogben.

The footage showed a lone defiant muse as she coarsely hacked off her long blonde hair then, in another act of liberation, anointed herself smearing the red of Saint George’s cross over her face, arms and chest.

St George’s Cross is a red cross on a white background. The design has been in use since the crusades, and it became associated with Saint George, the “warrior saint” often depicted as a crusader, from the late Middle Ages. The Warrior Gareth Pugh is back to London.