Charles Jeffrey started as a club kid but he is far from hanging up his dancing shoes. Having spent the last few seasons in Milan, the Scottish designer returned to London, the city where LOVERBOY turned from club night to fashion brand, for a show that took over the courtyard of Somerset House and ended with a set by Beth Ditto. In the show notes, Jeffrey explained that his tenth anniversary show was inspired by “queer time”, a cultural theory most associated with the theorist Jack Halberstam which posits that “queerness shapes not only our sense and understand of gender and sexuality, but also our experiences of time itself and our relations to past, present and future.”

The past, present and future were also the three pillars upon which Jeffrey’s collection lay. In the past, it could be said that Jeffrey was too in debt to his influences (his love of Westwood, for instance, eluded nobody) but with this tenth anniversary show, the collection felt like it was wholly and unmistakably Charles Jeffrey. Oversized jumpers that featured fig-leafed statuary, cartoonish arrows shot through the models and lumpy armour displayed a humour that many designers disappointingly grow out of as their brand matures. 

There is one word that can easily destroy a collection by a designer like Jeffrey. That word is “costume”. It displays an ingenuity that this LOVERBOY collection doesn’t feel like costume. Despite the dead swan scarves and the banana boots, it isn’t hard to imagine any of these clothes being worn to whatever the latest arty club night is on the Kingsland Road.

As one of Somerset House’s original studio residents, this tenth anniversary show was only the beginning of the celebrations of LOVERBOY’s first decade. Don’t forget to check out the exhibition, The Lore of LOVERBOY, happening in Somerset House until September.