“It was a modern-day Scottish sacrifice,” said Charles Jeffrey at the beginning of his show debrief. There was an installation of a hollowed-out tree hung with CDs and topped by a disco ball silhouetted against the dark on a platform at the end of his runway—a place for the ritual propitiation of the ancient, abused forces of nature. So it seemed, as his characters came and went, some dressed in costumes hung with horse brasses and sporting huge equine quiffs, others in Loverboy tartans, and still more in pannier dresses. Another sect looked like a cult of eco-paganists clinging together in their own dance of lament.
Let’s leave the narratives aside for a minute. What you see in these show pictures, shorn of surrounding context, is a clear view of his most accomplished, extensive setting out of his stall as a designer yet. Jeffrey has traversed that stage of his career where he’s presented generalized symbolic statements and reached a point where his tailoring fits impressively and sexily, starting with a teal all-in-one trompe l’oeil suit. His waisted, puff-shouldered jackets, flared asymmetric suits, and tartan trousers have magnetic swagger, and he’s gathered in a put-together softness in flower-sprigged prints. Good dresses. Great coats. Fun, bright Loverboy-fanboy sweaters and jersey polos.
There was a two-sided press release with this show. On one, a swirling, free-associative Scottish reel through folk tradition, art inspirations, and reimagined Glaswegian youth culture, undercut with intergenerational anger: “An older, hidden generation have made brutal calculations, and we’ve inherited their catastrophe.” On the other was his densely printed “Manifesto For Conscious Practice,” which contained the most salient takeaway. “We are working every day to improve our processes and working practices to ensure that we mindfully and with accountability respect our environment as much as we respect the people on whom the brand relies,” it began. “As part of this drive we are continuing to place equal value on human wellbeing alongside financial growth.”
Performing and costuming a fashion show confrontation with dystopian ecological disaster is one thing—many fashion shows have an undertow of this today. It’s another matter to actually do something concrete about it. Jeffrey is making that effort. Having gathered his team to study the weekly online sustainability course offered by the London College of Fashion, he is establishing better practices.
For Jeffrey, it goes beyond choosing to use GOTS-certified cotton, cutting down on chemical processes, and using recyclable plastic in packaging. “I think it’s about localism,” he said. “It’s about making sure that with the people you hire, that you’re giving them opportunity and training them. In a logistical way, too, it’s making sure that nothing transports too far, that fabrics are sourced nearby; that our teams go out to the factories we use to make sure the standards are okay.”
It was localism which circled him back to his Scottish roots for this collection. “I visited the Orkney islands and witnessed this pagan ceremony which has been going on for over 200 years. It’s a pageant that’s all about loving nature, amongst the rural families that live there.” The Horse Ceremony of Orkney involves ploughing contests and elaborate hand-crafted costumes. Their influences permeated the mad Teddy Boy horse-mane quiffs, the leather harnesses, and the lines of pom-pom, heart-shaped embroideries. Traveling on to Glasgow, he studied Margaret Mackintosh’s arts and crafts flower drawings.
Back to nature, again. Charles Jeffrey is a responsibility-taker and a realist; he didn’t hold back on acting out the doom he and his younger employees fear in this show. But he’s nevertheless a romantic, and a leader too. That must give those who work for him a rallying, optimistic sense of fun and purpose, even as they put on a show warning of impending disaster.
