“Loverboy’s always been a happening, a place where people club together to do something great.” So says Charles Jeffrey, talking about how he was galvanized into action to raise money for UK Black Pride tonight. “I mean, that’s how it all started, at Vogue Fabrics [the East End venue owned by Lyall Hakaraia] when I was a student. I thought if I could do it then, I can do it now.”

For London’s first digital fashion week Jeffrey had a virtual version of one of his exuberant party scenes planned, a teaser for the ‘top-up’ collection of t-shirts-and knits he went to huge lengths to put together in quarantine. But when the Black Lives Matter movement put anti-racism urgently in the forefront of consciousness, Jeffrey decided to clear his platform and invite a lineup of BIPOC performers, artists, and two black fashion graduates he’d taught at Westminster University to stage a live-streamed fundraiser—from the very same basement where the Loverboy club nights began.

(Photography by Alex Petch)

 

Introduced by MC Miss Jason, the event began with dancer and choreographer Malij Nashad Sharpe, whose performances have a cult underground following. They moved in a poetic semi-translucent, draped white jacket and trailing-hem trousers from graduate Catherine Hudson’s “Cool Rasta” collection. Hudson popped up on video to explain how her sensitive tailoring explores her Jamaican heritage through the Rocksteady bands who came to the UK: “a collection that distorts the male form to reflect internalized micro-aggressions,” is how she put it.

Singer-songwriter Rachel Chinouriri—at 21, named by the Evening Standard as one of London’s most influential young people—appeared wearing pieces from Halina Edwards’s master’s collection. She’d researched the significance of the 18th and 19th century Ghanaian flag-making tradition in the British museum before lockdown. “They were used to scare off the opposition in war. And every year, there’s the Fetu-Afahye festival on the Cape Coast where they are used symbolically to ward off disease.”

(Photography by Alex Petch)

 

Miss Jason gave a shout-out to Edwards, and the education work she’s committed to since graduating. “I’m researching for the Black Curriculum, which is delivering classes to children and teenagers about black history and arts,” she said. “I’m just so passionate to share the wealth of education there is.”

And there we have it: Nothing will change until UK society faces up to the truth about the British Empire, and embraces the myriad cultures, identities, and genders that belong to its communities. That spirit has always been at the center of Jeffrey’s Loverboy company; he’s ushered LGBTQIA+ performative happenings into the center of London fashion-consciousness.

(Photography by Alex Petch)

 

As for commerce? The GOTS certified t-shirting and the knits are smothered with Jeffrey’s spontaneously colorful self-portraits, splashed about at home during lockdown and made in factories in Lithuania and Scotland that managed to remain open on reduced staffs. “Masks, too!” he adds, noting that 5% of sales will go to the Kaleidoscope Trust COVID-19 Response Campaign, which is upholding the human rights of LGBTQIA+ people across the world during the pandemic.

Below, check out the complete livestream session.

 

Originally posted on ‘VOGUE’ by Sarah Mower