June 22, 2022 |
Bidding adieu to the London Fashion Week for the first time yesterday, Charles Jeffrey joined the Milanese schedule and presented his SS23 Loverboy collection with a satirical fashion film. Unfolding like a cathartic music video, the picture featured just over five-minutes of hazy opulence, beguiling characters and an ethereal, synth-heavy soundscape shaped by Nimmo – the whole thing was a pacifying bacchanalia of wellness.
Dubbed Phoarr! (punctuation included), the collection studied the sentiment of queer wellness – especially exploring the dualities of the body because queerness, in constant flux, is defiance. The aspiration to create safe spaces in sports for queer people informed Jeffrey’s design approach. The resulting edit offered quintessential athletic apparel that doubled as hedonistic clubwear. What’s more, expanding upon his womenswear offering, flouncy ruched dresses and outlandish sculptural headpieces appeared beside scalloped trousers, oversized square puritan collars, billowing gowns, light-as-a-feather knits and billowing seersucker blouses.
Stitching the beautiful multiplicities of his queer community into his garms, Jeffrey presented tailoring – in wool and recycled polyester – which boasted gender-nonconforming pinstripes and chainmail linings.
Rather than the archetypal tartan that has defined the Loverboy aesthetic for so long, Gingham, argyle and check prints were injected into the pastel palette. Elsewhere, eccentric airbrushed prints flaunted high-spirit doodles like an elusive octopus, a tree, an abstract portrait and primitive figures holding hands, evolving the collection into something inherently optimistic and totally uplifting.
Photography courtesy of Charles Jeffrey Loverboy.
