Charles Jeffrey LOVERBOY S/S 2020 London Fashion Week Men’s

Mood board: The joyousness and revelry felt at LOVERBOY in previous seasons has switched into a much darker, more sombre, pensive atmosphere. As with Eden Loweth and Tom Barratt’s nod to Derek Jarman at their Art School show, the prevailing mood for the queer zeitgeist is one of introspection and solemnity. The fashionable, fantastical frocks aren’t just for partying in. Jeffrey’s patchworked tartan suiting, CMYK tears and wavy pinstripes had an undercurrent of dissidence. They seemed pulled apart and pieced together again in what the show notes called ‘visceral responses to societal change.’

Best in show: The show was entitled ‘Mind’s Instructions’ after a line from The Libertines’s 2002 song ‘Horrorshow’: ‘I’ve been following/Following your mind's instructions/On how to just slowly, sharply screw myself to death’. Tailoring in feather weight jacquard recalled armour and civil service uniforms; the models wore fishnets and Dr Martens. This was part punk, part spoof.

Team work: Literature ushered in the spirit of rebellion. The show at the British Library opened with Jeffrey reading Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘In The Beginning', his post punk sprit ran in tandem with the central glass-encased collection once owned by George III. ‘This collaboration with Charles Jeffrey starts a new dialogue between words, performance and fashion, showing the power of libraries to be places enabling new and exciting creative dialogues,’ Maja Maricevic, Head of Higher Education, The British Library said. ‘Whether the rebellion of romanticism in the 19th century with William Blake challenging the established order of his time, or the Library’s collections of zines expressing the anger of punk in 1970s, the British Library is a place of potent ideas with the power to inspire and challenge.’ Words matter.