Designer by day, LOVERBOY club host by night – Charles Jeffrey is always busy with creative ventures. Now, the young London talent has teamed up with old friends and collaborators Reece + Dean for a new film that brings these worlds together, turning the characters of his showstopping AW17 menswear offering into figures for an animated short also inspired by bizarre Japanese game shows and Lord of the Rings.

The designer says the idea came from “some unfinished business” from his apocalyptic, Theo Adams’ company directed, Gary Card costume featuring show back in January. “In the development of the show we talked about video games a lot,” he says – “it was a big part of the creative that didn’t end up explicitly in the final show. So this film is an extension of some of the ideas we wanted to push further.” 

Coinciding with Reece + Dean’s experimentation with 3D scanning, the idea in the pair’s words, “grew very organically,” with models’ bodies scanned after they’d stepped off the runway and animated in the style of Braveheart battles and Lord of the Rings video games.

“Escapism and fantasy (are) pretty much our starting point for every project,” the designer says himself. “Sometimes it’s about nightmares, rather than dreams, but something otherworldy is always there. It’s never pure realism.” Watching the faceless, endlessly repeating scans of the rest of his AW17 characters certainly attests to this feeling of something nightmarish, but the instantly recognisable liberty spikes are a reminder amongst the abstract of Jeffrey’s roots in club kid hedonism. 

It’s what Reece + Dean see at the heart of what the designer does too – “LOVERBOY creates another world for young creatives in London where you can escape the drab of every day. Charles is turning fantasy into reality by creating a platform for expression.”

Watch the film below.