Outside in the freezing cold there was a man with slicked-back hair intently playing an out of tune piano, while crackling braziers lit the audience’s way into a dilapidated power station. With his upswept black eye makeup and moth-riddled camel overcoat, he looked not unlike the impresario of Loverboy, Charles Jeffrey himself. That was the welcome to the cabaret the designer was about to lay on inside—a piece of theater with rackety, be-feathered, ball-gowned, and tartan-suited characters sprung from Berlin nightclubs in the ’20s, and Peter Pan.
There were crashed chandeliers, an Edwardian bathtub filled with torn-out book pages, a stack of old mattresses, a festooned dressing table like something out of Sally Bowles’s bedroom. A fully clothed couple of naifs jumped into the bath and started play-fighting with the pages. Someone in a red-orange crinolined, raw-edged dress swept by in a hat made from a twist of old beaded tapestry and a towering ostrich feather. A tattered flapper posed in a nude tulle embroidered dress, face masked by a wonky crystal waterfall. Childlike “Lost Boys” wandered past in tied-tight hoodies with teddy bear ears. Someone sported a tartan stuffed-toy fox as a stole.
It was a place where Jeffrey somehow made decadence and innocence happily coexist in a fizzily sincere atmosphere of showing off. “I wanted to paint a picture of all the people I hold dear,” he declared. If anyone wants inspiration for what to wear to the Met Gala opening of the exhibition on camp, this collection couldn’t hold a better set of opportunities.
For one thing, it showed a huge upgrade in Jeffrey’s ambition. He pulled off his first stab at couture elegance—with all the chic accessories—with a surprising aplomb. Asked about that, he noted that he’d interned at Christian Dior as a student—handy experience he’s kept up his sleeve until the right time. While doing that, his other drive was an improvement on his tailoring. The signature Loverboy tartan suits and a coatdress on a girl were fitted, spick-and-span. Embroidered, patch-worked, decorative coats, cloches, berets, colorful signature sweaters, and all—it was a fulfillment of all he’s achieved so far, and a big step on.
But then there’s the subtext, too. The Weimar Republic cabaret imagery will cause those who know their history to rush ominously on to what happened next: the takeover of Nazism. Charles Jeffrey spelled that right out in his show notes, positing Peter Pan’s instruction to the Lost Boys to “take care of everything that’s smaller than you.” His championing of the queer community—and the many friends who collaborated on and in this show—now has a very definite intent. “One thinks of policies being proposed in America against the trans community, or U.K. policies to further disadvantage the disabled,” he wrote. “An opposition to a rumbling sense of global unfairness lies beneath this show.” Charles Jeffrey got serious in all ways, this season.
