June 16, 2025 |
Step inside the land of Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, where music, fashion and a touch of creative chaos converge.
On Saturday, despite the official cancellation of London Fashion Week June, the Scottish-born, London-based designer presented his SS26 collection in a rather unconventional way. Taking over Abbey Road Studios to shoot a lookbook, documentary, produce a vinyl record and more, he let select press in to witness a not-often-seen, behind-the-scenes happening. “It gives the brand an opportunity to speak to people in a new way,” he said, stepping away from the fashion action for a quick interview with 10.
Always one to go against the grain, Loverboy began as a club night before blooming into the beloved fashion business we know today, but it’s this sentiment exactly that led Jeffrey to present his collection in such an unexpected, scarcely tested way. “I never really saw myself as a fashion brand,” he says. “We just sort of fell into fashion, but now I have the opportunity to translate it in a new way.”
The collection itself, dubbed Prepared Piano (a nod to John Cage’s 1940s technique of modifying the instrument with bolts, rubber and cutlery), cast a symphony of quirky characters to play into distilled archetypes imagined from the characters seen in film material discovered in Abbey Road’s archives. Crisp-suited execs, flamboyant ‘60s musicians and the lab-coated engineers that once shaped Abbey Road’s soundscape are, for 2026, reimagined. Loverboy presents instead, Gen Z producers cocooned in fuzzy beanies and hoodies, defiant rockstars in trumpet-flared sleeves and precise technicians in oversized lab coats. One glitter-sprayed gold dress unpeels like a banana while also somehow resembling a trumpet and another, heavy red crochet frock cocoons the body like a wearable sculpture. Classic tailoring is joyfully distorted – fashion remixed like sound.
The idea of the prepared piano, the logic behind it and the unpredictable results, spurred Jeffrey’s process this season, with each garment skewed and interrupted, rallying against tradition like, well… a prepared piano. That meant shirts were cut with extra sleeves that tied around the waist like belts, trompé l’œil belts were built into trousers and ties were built into shirting; the kind of stuff that makes you do a double take. One suit was wonkily cinched along the breast creating a molten-like effect while certain shirts were worn backwards or upside down, the kind of intentional mistakes a kid might make when playing dress up in their parent’s wardrobe. Like a prepared piano, nothing was as it seemed.
Jeffrey also used the sonic experience to guide his creative process, allowing the melodies of songs recorded at Abbey Road to lead his pen in his initial sketches. “If these walls could talk,” he muses, considering the myriads of stories and iconic moments that have unfolded within the historic recording studio. “The most amazing albums have been created here, and it’s because of the space being very open to anything, like famously people have brought fucking like animals in here, or mad set design, or even spiritual leaders. They just are like, okay, the label wants this, and Abbey Road makes that happen.”
Paying tribute to the creative process, this live, unscripted vignette – part concert, part campaign, part cultural time capsule, part love letter to music-making – allowed us to see a whole new side of Loverboy. One where fashion doesn’t walk the runway, it riffs, remixes and reverberates down from the loud speaker.
Photography courtesy of Charles Jeffrey Loverboy.
