Boy Meets Wool: LOVERBOY on SHOWStudio.com
Over the years, designers and makers including Gareth Pugh and Nicola Formichetti have taken up artistic residence at Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio.com to create a garment or piece of art live on camera.
Next in line is Charles Jeffery, Scottish born illustrator and designer and founder of infamous multi-dimensional brand Charles Jeffrey LOVERBOY. Part fashion label, part-club night, LOVERBOY offers a vision where all cutural and social activities are lent equal weight. The events are reminiscent of 1980s antecedents Taboo and Blitz but also of the buzz and make-do-and-mend dirtiness of early Noughties electropop.
As a BA graduate of Central Saint Martins, Jeffrey used the funds raised from his once-monthly night at VF Dalston to help pay for his MA, showing a final collection that featured paint-splashed denim, shrunken wool knit and shredded jumpers. Leaving CSM, he was taken pretty immediately into the nurturing fold of the Fashion East stable, where his presentations took psychic and physical inspiration from his clubbing community.
At January’s LCM, AW16 was a take on ‘drunk suiting’ and offered conservative menswear styled with bloodied ears, champagne cork-cage chokers, flattened tiaras and ‘Piss Off’ and ‘You Twat’ pochettes. Jeffrey’s mates play key roles in all of this, from modelling to making. It’s like Vetements - but very, very London in gritty soul and integrity.
From April 19 to 21, Jeffrey will be online live at SHOWstudio.com, replicating his own studio environment and inviting in friends and collaborators to join him for chats as he works with merino wool provided by The Woolmark Company to create his garment.
The pieces will be made with the help of knitwear designer and regular Jeffrey collaborator Tracey Turbitt-Lewis. In homage to the fact that LOVERBOY is as much a spirit and community as it is a label, the final creation will be modelled by performance artist Kevin Le Grand Bailor, a regular at VF Dalston, the dual home of Jeffrey’s studio and the LOVERBOY club nights.
Tune in on 19, 20 and 21 of April 2016 to watch the process unfold live on camera at http://showstudio.com
