From club night to queer couture: Charles Jeffrey on 10 years of Loverboy

Last Friday [June 7], in the grounds of Somerset House, Charles Jeffrey made his London return to debut his SS25 collection. Guests wearing punchy suits, striped sailor dresses, and beanies bearing ears and horns mooched around on the cobbles, before setting out to find their seats. On each chair was a small package: opening it, attendees found a vintage quartz watch and the message “Even a stopped clock”. Long story short, the designer’s latest offering is about time, his adopted city of London, and queerness – essentially, everything his Loverboy label has encompassed – from queer nightlife culture to twisted traditionalism – from day one, in a nutshell.

Another marker of the passing of time is the fact Loverboy is now a decade young – it has been ten years since the label sprung up from East London club night of the same name, when the designer took over the basement of Vogue Fabrics and invited all his mates to come tear up the dancefloor. In celebration of this comes a new exhibition, The Lore of Loverboy, also taking place in Somerset House. Stepping into the space is like returning to those sweaty club nights, starting in 2014, and following Jeffrey’s journey since. Mining underground club culture and clashing it with signifiers of his upbringing in Scotland, his radical tartan creations line the space. Many of them are plastered with the fantastical cartoonish creatures that punctuate his work.

While the exhibition represents the past ten years, and the clocks on the seats had stopped ticking, Jeffrey’s SS25 show was full of forward-moving momentum, Opened by a live choir, as per usual, the designer did away with the gender binary to present a co-ed collection of innovative plaid suiting, grungy sweaters, and bolshy striped gowns, modelled by a cast of friends and Loverboy family members of all shapes and sizes. Among them was legendary Gossip singer and Loverboy fangirl Beth Ditto, who stepped in to finish the show with a stunning live performance, as well as swaggering Saint Sebastian-style figures and checkerboard duchesses in pannier skirts.

As the dust settles post-show and Jeffrey takes a minute to let it all sink in, we caught up with him to hear more about the last ten years, and looking to ten more.

Hey Charles! First of all,  the show was incredible. I am intrigued about the inspiration and if this is connected to your new exhibition at Somerset House?

Charles Jeffrey: So, the exhibition is all about reflection. It’s like thinking about time, right? It is about continuity. I also wanted the collection to be about time and this idea of queer time. I was thinking about the relationships queer people have with time and society. These range from being fashionably late, to not being married, or not having children or choosing when your identity is expressed to the world. These are all things queer people can’t choose to position themselves in. 

I wanted to create a smorgasbord of references that all coagulate together. Thinking about London, proportion, colour, the idea of Londonians in this Roman city, the casual structures. I wanted to explore that within the weird and wonderful world of Loverboy. That includes colour, humour, classicism, creating a moment and making it happen. We did a lot of things, for example, we worked with liberalism as a concept. So, today there was a choir performing, which we decided to anchor into the performance itself. That was the moment. 

That is so interesting. In terms of garments, did you introduce any new silhouettes within this collection? Or is it all more of a continuation of the body of work you’ve already done?

Charles Jeffrey: We focussed on skewing proportions. Within this approach, we had a humorous take on items and used them to articulate new ways of working. For me, our knitwear and the knitwear accessories are super important. It was about how we could inject a pop of colour or a stitch into every single item of clothing and bags and keep everything open generally. It was a knitwear-heavy collection. 

A couple of years ago, when I was studying at Saint Martins, you did this lecture about a single you dropped. Now you are doing an exhibition. How is the exhibition situated within the Loverboy universe? And also, these days, do you think a brand needs more than just clothing?

Charles Jeffrey: One hundred per cent. I respect many different forms of design within fashion. In today’s society, we have to push ourselves to be seen and to have attention – you have to become more than just a clothing brand, you have to become a cultural brand. You have to think about how your approach can exist within all of these other mediums. Because fashion borrows from all these mediums to regurgitate products. 

To me, it’s a way of being. I think there are positions for all kinds of creatives and approaches, for example, a pattern cutter who likes to sew still has an opinion on fashion, but maybe they don’t need to have a brand today. Maybe they are someone who helps with a brand. For me, I am a brand person. And this exhibition was a real joy to work on because it really reiterated all the different kinds of things we have done over the years. 

What do you think the Loverboy universe will look like in a few years then?

Charles Jeffrey: It’s interesting. I think it’s always going to be something that feels full of joy. But I think there need to be moments where we pendulum into other emotions. In terms of product, you have to dig deep to make sure the core product stays the same. When you think about Armani or Paul Smith, for example, they always had suits and stripes, which helped to anchor the product. When you look at their work, the things Paul Smith did in the 90s were incredibly experimental. And then with Armani, it has always been this navy or silver structural silhouette. 

I feel like we’d always be some kind of knitwear or tailoring brand that experiments with print. I’d like to think of Loverboy as having a kind of Warhol effect – we’re always going to have a studio that continues to make work. Warhol transitioned from screen printing to a magazine, then to film, but he always did the screen printing. That kind of thing. I am really interested in performance, acting, making a TV show and a broadcast. That is what I hope to evolve into.

I love the Warhol comparison. Thinking about your exhibit, what was the process of curating it with Bunney [Kinney] like?

Charles Jeffrey: We are friends, so it’s funny – it’s just really casual. Sometimes I have a bit of performance anxiety, so I prefer it to be relaxed and chill as opposed to something super proper. My sensibility lies in exacting things about the energy that you gain from engaging with somebody. Me and Bunny have such a great relationship, so these bog tasks didn’t feel that big, because it was just us working on it, as well as Jonathan and Fenella who helped us at the beginning. All these people helped me to reflect on the work in a way that felt right. 

The exhibition is about the decade of Loverboy. How would you say it has evolved and changed since you started?

Charles Jeffrey: I think there are a lot of things that felt very reminiscent of a show I did in 2019. It was the pink show, it gave me energy again because it was about joy as well. In terms of change, we have really started to understand what works well for us. And we continue to create those products. The knitwear throughout the whole collection feels new. When I showed the collection to Tim Blanks, he said that it felt so sharp, so proper. I think that is because we relied on suiting or Prince of Wales Check, things you see on Savile Row. And then, we tested it, we turned it upside-down, we turned it inside-out, we’ve made it huger. It’s quite good for us to continue doing what people see as traditional and twisted. 

I love that – the juxtaposition of traditional and twisted is super interesting. And finally – is there a message that you would like people to take away from this exhibition or this collection?

Charles Jeffrey: I really want people to latch on to the idea of availablism. The idea of making something from nothing, because I didn’t come from a lot. I did all sorts of crazy things, like not paying rent for a year when I started my brand. I think I was able to see the value in things through the lens of amazing collaborators. For example, Joshua Beaty, who is also in the exhibition. And being able to create something from nothing, and have an approach which feels incredibly naïve and playful. I am hoping that people will get that out of the exhibition. If I can do it, you can do it as well.