Matcha and recession indicators: Frieze London 2025 is a mirror of our uncertain times

London’s grand art fair, split between the fresh-faced Frieze London and the gilt-edged antiquarianism of Frieze Masters, has left everyone scratching their heads this year. Art, after all, reflects (and in the best cases anticipates) the times – and these, as you might have guessed without even stepping inside the tent, are decidedly wobbly.

“Out there, the world’s a mess. People want rigour, they want certainty,” says a dealer at the Lullo Pampoulides booth, standing beside two haunting canvases by early-20th-century Tuscan expressionist and anarchist Lorenzo Viani. His paintings – eerie, magnetic – feel like a prelude to an age of paranoia. Androids optional, anxiety guaranteed.

What’s most striking this year is the unconscious harmony between the two fairs. Frieze London – usually the loud, provocative sibling – has unexpectedly gone quiet. Portraiture and still life abound, more than ever. The faces of the subjects have changed, their outfits updated, but from Sironi’s interwar families to the London ones painted by Patrizio Di Massimo (who previously gave us the stunning portraits of dancer Roberto Bolle and Prada-affiliated duo Formafantasma), the feeling of a world soon to crumble is shared, disguised only by (mandatorily plastic) flutes of white wine and champagne.

To decode Frieze 2025, one must turn to the vocabulary of now (and the near-past): social media. Demure and coquette could well describe much of what’s on show, and what people seem to like. These are the small, deliciously tasteless (and ruinously expensive) trinkets of Gozzano-like memory: superfluous yet sublime in an age of disorientation and detox, where pop art and modernism have been reduced to Pinterest mood-board fetishes.

That mood is crystallised in Alex Margo Arden’s Accounts (Ginny on Frederick), winner of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation Prize. It’s a monumental ready-made sculpture made out of decommissioned mannequins from the National Transport Museum. Their plaster bodies capture long-gone professions of an equally long-vanished England: white, working-class and – someone may argue – happier. They’re milkmen, butchers, bellboys and bus drivers, all in their uniforms and crisp whitecoats. Limbless, frayed, their wigs torn off, bound together with a war rope. Dickensian in tone, it’s the ghost of Britain’s past staring at us from a historical cul-de-sac.

Fittingly, one of the most resonant booths is that of Peter Finer, a London dealer in antique arms. Its medieval armours, halberds, ceremonial swords, cannons, and embroidered 18th-century sachets look spookily contemporary yet stunningly eye-pleasing. On one side, they capture the ghost of an impending future; on the other, echo present trends. From the cyber-medieval tattoos that have replaced tribals and stick-and-pokes in the Gen Z aesthetic, to bardcore – that 2020 microgenre of pop covers in Medieval music canons – now soundtrack of Britain’s new, new right soirées, as Jemima Kelly recently noted in the Financial Times.

Every art fair is a mood board of the economy, and Frieze is no exception. One phrase haunts this season: recession indicator. Those small cultural symptoms that betray both economic and social downturns. Miniature canvases are one such sign: tiny, coquette, and (one hopes) affordable. Homes are shrinking (especially in London, where a 'flat' is often a room), inflation keeps rising, and art seems to notice.

An English colleague suggests the overall caution among galleries indeed reflects these uncertain times: dealers crave safe sales, not risk. He calls it the "Kardashian effect": the idea that classics like Fontana (in every possible size and colour, bordering on self-parody) have become little more than bathroom décor for “Miami condo toilets.” Heaven forbid guests leave without snapping a selfie in the loo.

Introduce the middle-aged American real estate manager-turned-art podcaster. Oh, how she loves Italy! How she dreams of a young Italian lover, a flat in Florence, and endless nights of spa-gaddy and gelato pistasceeyo. And that Armani exhibition she adored, the one with all the red dresses (possibly Valentino, ma’am. You know, Armani never really had a thing for red, but who’s counting anyway?) paired with artworks, also red. All Basquiat and Fontana, of course.

Another recession indicator? The rise of matcha stands, where once portable champagne bars reigned supreme. Frieze Masters, at least, comes to the moral rescue, still clinging to its teas and coffees.

Drawing comparisons with social media is unavoidable. Much recent art – as well as design – seems conceived for the smartphone lens and the feed. Yet, in both the art exhibited and in the approach of the younger visitors, we’re witnessing a shift from the vertical maximalism of uber-edited Instagram pics to the hazy calm of the horizontal frame: slightly blurred, intentionally off-kilter. An intentional refuge from influencer performativity into the arms of lo-fi boomerism. Still, the influencers (or aspiring such) swarm. After all, you haven’t truly been to the VIP preview if you haven’t posted, as the mantra goes.

Among the inevitable half-dozen Basquiat lookalikes and sartorial performance worthy of Blitz club circa 1980, everyone at Frieze looks – or pretends to look – like a socialite. Accessories steal the show – outrageous hats, colourful stockings, oversized rings, even prosthetic horns (Halloween’s around the corner, after all) –, as art becomes the accessory.

And then there’s fashion as patronage, ever more crucial to holding up a teetering cultural ecosystem. The UK, at least, manages it with more dignity (and funding) than we do in Italy. Stone Island returned as the official partner of Frieze London’s Focus section, supporting 34 emerging galleries and also designing the staff uniforms in collaboration with photographer Nat Faulkner. Prada, meanwhile, went all out, taking over the recently refurbished King’s Cross Town Hall for The Audience, an Elmgreen & Dragset (of Prada Marfa fame) installation investigating the themes of attention span and spectatorship. Inside: cinema-style seating, hyper-real mannequins staring at a blurry film projection. Outside: a never-ending queue for the evening party, where hope lies less in the open bar than in snagging that photo under Miuccia’s famed triangle. “The installation? What installation? But darling, the margaritas are fabulous! Fancy one?”

A friend points out that Chanel bags are the true stars of this year’s Frieze. You can spot them instantly, like the Italian exhibitors, in their pompous razor-lapel blazers, ultra-tight chinos and blindingly white sneakers: part Paninaro-turned-entrepreneur, part former Serie A legend-turned-football manager. Meanwhile, at Masters, the Savile Row suits – with their gentle pinstripes and 1 ⅝-inch cuffs – cut a different figure altogether.

As proof that Frieze has outgrown its identity as just another art fair, we have the memes: the ultimate cultural seal of approval. Chief among them, @socks_house:meeting, the etiquette gospel of posh, millennial London. As its anonymous admin notes, “The real art at Frieze is the fact you’ve managed to get billionaires poo in portaloos.” Until next year.

Opening image: Alex Margo Arden, Accounts, 2025. Photography by Choreo. Courtesy of the artist and Ginny on Frederick, London.