PARIS — Charles Jeffrey is ready to take on Paris, one small step at a time.
After showing in Milan for two seasons, the brand hosted a screening-turned-party at Silencio des Prés in Paris on Friday night to showcase the fall 2024 collection in the form of a short film, titled “Moshkirk & Booness.”
“I wanted to think about how I can start the year off with something a bit smaller, intimate, concentrated, and vulnerable. I wanted to write music and a script for a film to cover all of the grounds that I love about Loverboy, Scotland, post-punk music, art and collage, and just general anarchism,” said Jeffrey at the event.
This is a great opportunity to show it in a place where all my friends are congregated right now. For Paris, you have to do a small presentation first before you can do a show. So we’re putting our little pawns in and just seeing how things go,” he added.
That doesn’t mean he is ready to pack up and relocate to Paris. The designer from Glasgow revealed that he is planning to stage an open-to-the-public fashion show at Somerset House in London in June to celebrate the brand’s 10th anniversary. The company with a team of 11 people will remain in London as well.
“It’s not a fashion week [London] that’s popular anymore. We don’t do men’s anymore in London, but I’m going to democratize that. I want to invite everybody from the U.K. to come and buy tickets and do a gig. I’ve been flirting with the idea of performing and doing music, maybe I can invite all of my partners to join,” he said.
Running in parallel with the show would be an exhibition that “tells people about how you can start a young brand from my own experience,” said Jeffrey, who has been teaching at major fashion institutions including Central Saint Martins, University of Westminster, London College of Fashion, and University of Leeds.
“Loverboy is always about championing the crowd we are with and lifting people up. Now that we have been in the business for 10 years, l am thinking how can I exchange that similar sensibility? I think it’s a knowledge sharing. So the exhibition is all around knowledge sharing, from the minutiae of how to set up a cash flow, to how to talk to your team, and how to influence primary research,” he added.
The designer also feels like the story of his generation of fashion designers has not been told yet.
“What I want to do is that I want to tell people in 2024 what it was like in 2013. It might not be the same as in the 1990s when McQueen and Galliano were coming out. But it’s something that people can still learn from,” he said.
After the big celebratory moment, Jeffrey said the brand will focus on doing ” the tactical strategic fashion thing in Paris. We do the strong shows. We push and push.”
At the same time, the designer said he is ready to take up a big creative director role when the opportunity is right.
“I would always have two brands. Jonathan Anderson is a big inspiration to me. If he can do it, then I can do it. He’s Irish. I’m Scottish. We’re the same thing,” quipped Jeffrey.
Since launching his namesake label after graduating from Central Saint Martins with a master’s degree in fashion design under the late course director Louise Wilson – the hard-driving professor who mentored and shaped the careers of designers including Christopher Kane, Roksanda Ilincic and Mary Katrantzou- the brand now sells to around 100 accounts worldwide, and its e-commerce site, introduced in 2020, generates around half a million pounds a year.
Jeffrey revealed that since receiving investment from fashion showroom and brand accelerator Tomorrow in 2021, the brand has been “growing at a very steady rate.”
“Tomorrow is like my big brother. They assist me with all of the larger decisions. It’s good to have these people who have been working in the industry for such a long time not only through sales, but also experts in merchandising, strategy, and marketing to come in and tell us how we should do things,” he added.
Stefano Martinetto, cofounder and chief executive officer at Tomorrow, said the partnership is going strong because Jeffrey is “extremely mature, very well behaved, and super committed. He has a fantastic team, and the spirit of the team is unparalleled.”
Jeffrey believes they work well as a team because “Italian and Scottish are very similar. We care about family. We care about food. We are friendly. If you bring a Scottish person to London, he would be like ‘Why does no one say hi to you?’ It’s also about honesty. We tell each other exactly how we feel about everything.”
