October 21, 2020 |
For Charles Jeffrey, producing his Loverboy SS21 collection in a pandemic was a catharsis of creation. His first challenge was what to do with his conflicting emotions. He translated the negative ones – fear, uncertainty and a stay-away mentality – into clothes covered in nature’s warning signs. Pieces were daubed with motifs based on poison dart frogs, orb spiders, deadly nightshade plants and angry nettle stings. The spikey silhouettes mirrored the shape of the Covid virus itself. But all that anxiety and pain was only the first stage. Jeffrey evolved all that negativity and fear into something totally uplifting, brimming with mood-altering colour and positivity.
Calling the collection The Healing his process mirrored his (and our) emotional state over the pandemic. He talked of the restorative power of colour referencing Chromotherapy, where bodily energy is realigned through the seven chakras. What does that look like? A defiantly joyful explosion of vivid colour and silhouette, worn by Jeffrey’s Loverboy community of creative characters and captured by Tim Walker in a fold-out out posterzine sent to editors. This great, creative coming together was even accompanied by it’s own soundscape. With this collection, Jeffrey is exhorting us to step away from the fear towards “elation, sex, communion.” He’s not just designing how SS21 should look, but how it should feel.
Photography by Tim Walker.
