Discover Charles Jeffrey LOVERBOY‘s Fall Winter 2020.21 Hell Mend You collection, that explores the broken future and the survival of humanity, presented on Saturday, January 4th, during the recently finished London Fashion Week Men’s.
“In HELL MEND YOU, Charles Jeffrey creates two counter-cultures and sets them against each other, either side of an existential dance. This is the future, cast in all its bleak reality, and the dance is a demand and a DARE: the survival of humanity is either the PRIZE or the PRICE…“
“The first sect Jeffrey conjures is the DANDERS. Evolved from the proud roots of Teddy-boy pride with an underlying twist of Scottish militaria, DANDERS – as the name suggests – would be dandies alone if they weren’t so physical, so inventive, so hands-on. In this barren, undone world, they brandish a toughness, even a muscularity, reaching down in desperation to an older, more animalistic tradition – from the very edges of Scotland.
The more sophisticated a people become the more the animal speaks through them, and in the DANDERS, new proud forms emerge with the careful adornment of horse ceremony motifs. Their colours are bold, dark, warm: black, rich reds, burgundy, orange; earthen hues. Ambiguity is all: a uniform might clothe a soldier or a priest. As Scottish military history is evolved and re-rendered. Tartan is itself a touch-point for the revolution: a strip of LOVERBOY plaid flirts down the length of an army coat, a squaddie’s bonnet is lightened in the wool-cotton mix that is ‘bumble’, flopping down bluely with raw edge.
The counterpart of the DANDERS clan are the GLAEDYHOOTS; If the presiding artist for the DANDERS is street-wise John Byrne, for the GLAEDYHOOTS, it is Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, who made the willow and the climbing-rose key to her elegant, nature-based forms.
The GLAEDYHOOTS themselves are sensuousness, selflessness, grace in the midst of strife. They are magical crafters, emotionally, delicately intelligent – glade-dwellers, migraine-disappears, soothers – practical reclaimers of the word ‘exquisite’. Mauves, rose, river-greens are the palette here as, for a GLAEDYHOOT the heart is more flower than flesh, a hopeful blossom between bud and bloom, just unfurling – yet quite strong enough to structure a coat-dress or gown. Spiral-ruffled sleeves and silky pleated full skirts floating on black tulle underlayers point to a painterly people, hand decorated with eddies of colour which speak of forest dapple and river-pool reflections, naturalistic reminiscences from a world in which only traces of nature remain.“
