February 24, 2022 |
A shareable wardrobe for anyone, anywhere – Les Girls Les Boys is a label built sharing your clobber between mates, dates, and lovers. “Putting your clothes on, taking your clothes off, rolling out of bed, getting out on the street, whatever it may be, it’s about real life,” says Serena Rees MBE, the brand’s founder, who calls me from her London design studio.
We’re chatting as the brand prepares to release its SS22 collection, which Rees calls “a celebration of the youthful modern cohort”. Rees is an industry veteran who is widely known for co-founding the luxury lingerie brand Agent Provocateur in 1994, which she would go on to sell in 2007. A decade in the making, Les Girls Les Boys – founded in 2017 – is a contemporary cocktail of athleisure, underwear, streetwear and casual garb.
The idea to start the brand came from observing those who surrounded her. “I just watched my kids, their friends, people in between, and what they did, where they´d go out, what they talked about, how they dressed,” says Rees. “I’ve never cared what anyone wears, they should wear what they want if it makes them happy. Whatever you want to be, be it.”
Rees’ gender-fluid approach to the brand is informed by her days as a club kid, trading clothes constantly to create the ultimate going out-out look. This playful approach is now rethought to meet the needs of a Gen-Z audience: a generation of shoppers who pride comfort and flexibility with their everyday wardrobe. “We want our pieces to have a meaning.”
Through the pandemic, as the globe climbed into sweats, the popularity of the label soared, with its tracksuits alone experiencing a 1000% increase in sales. There are plenty of new various laced into the brand’s latest collection, doused in citrusy oranges, berry pinks and mauve, sitting alongside mesh twinsets, easy-going velour corset tops, mini dresses, pyjamas and swimwear. “[The collection] is quite nineties, there’s a lot of print, texture and colour,” says Rees, who is particularly drawn to a pixelated plaid print which is dotted throughout. “I have the ethos bed to street, but I also have the ethos beach to bed to beach to bar to beach again, whatever it is. It is a rolling idea of pieces that exist in a wardrobe that can be added and work with one another.”
An impressive 80 per cent of Les Girls Les Boys’ fabrics are bespoke, recycling and repurposing natural materials like bamboo and wood chip for fabrics that create zero-waste, seamless pieces. “You have to be responsible and realise that there is an overproduction problem,” says Rees. “We do the best we can and when you are a small young brand, doing that is costly, and difficult. The really big companies with huge profits, they should be the ones leading the way.”
Democratic in both its approach and its price point, without ever sacrificing quality or the precision of its cuts, fabrics and sustainable techniques, Les Girls Les Boys is a wardrobe attuned to today.
Shop the collection here.
Photographer VANINA SORRENTI
Fashion Editor SOPHIA NEOPHITOU
Sittings editor GARTH ALLDAY SPENCER
Hair GIOVANNI IOVINO at Julian Watson
Make-up CHIARA GUIZZETTI at Green Apple
Models LARA BIROLI at Elite and JUSTAS DJAKONOVAS at URBN
Photography assistant LORENZO BERETTA
Fashion assistant MARTINA AMATO
Hair assistant GAETANO PANE
Digital operator CONSIGLIO MANNI
Casting ALEXANDRE JUNIOR CYPRIEN at Creatvt
Production ELIZABETH COOPER
