At a turbulent time in the UK fashion industry, there comes some good news – one infectiously joyful brand is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Charles Jeffrey’s Loverboy, which started as a queer club night in east London and has dressed Tilda Swinton and Harry Styles, is looking back on a decade of tartan, trash, animalism, anarchy, paganism and punk.
In the opening room of the anniversary exhibition, which opened at Somerset House on Saturday, is a poster for the club night from 2015, decorated with doodled hearts; £3 before midnight, £5 after. It is a fitting memento for a retrospective of the interdisciplinary brand, the brainchild of the Glaswegian designer, illustrator and all-round creative, born out of the music and party scene of 2010s London: Jeffrey even used the funds from the monthly club night to finance his label.
“It was about London at a time when music and fashion were interlinked so massively,” Jeffrey told a crowd of assembled press at a preview on Thursday morning, wearing his brand’s signature loafers with metal claws bursting out of the toe.
From underground roots to the red carpet, Jeffrey has designed ranges at the invitation of legendary avant garde Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo and in 2021 took on the financial backing of fashion group Tomorrow (which also works with fellow London fashion talents Martine Rose and A Cold Wall), propelling the brand on to a more global stage.
While not a household name – yet – he has been described by Sarah Mower of US Vogue as “the upholder of all that is human, creative and cheerful about British fashion” and by Tim Blanks at the Business of Fashion as “speaking to young London the way Alexander McQueen spoke to his generation”.
Talking to the Guardian at the preview, Jeffrey located his work in the tradition of Andy Warhol. “Primarily, we’re making clothing, but we also make music, we make videos, we create artwork, we do art direction, we write scripts.”
The exhibition, titled The Lore of Loverboy, covers the brand’s origins, creative process and more glitzy present day. The genesis is etched out via Polaroids of partygoers at the club night, outfits from Jeffrey’s student collections at Central Saint Martins and early Loverboy looks. An upcycled dress from 2019, shiny blue with bacteria-like clusters of foil-covered balls under its tutu-hem, perfectly encapsulates the brand’s DIY aesthetic. Jeffrey coined the term “availabilism” to sum up the idea of using what he could, in those early days, get his hands on. Other looks see belts fashioned out of bungee cords with hooks.