Creativity is what this world needs most right now. In times of division and international conflict, there needs to be a movement that inspires people to unite to overcome injustice. London is fighting back with the art of fashion– and just in time for summer trends.
Streetwear as well as high fashion are blossoming in London now more than ever. New trends bend concepts like gender and revisit visual themes, such as Renaissance, with a fresh colloquial twist.
Designers like Charles Jeffrey, who is famous for his branded empire on-the-rise, LOVERBOY, has taken older inspiration from Vivienne Westwood and reconstructed fantasy style pieces that mirror his adolescent struggles of escaping a world that didn’t understand him.
“It was escapism,” says Jeffrey, according to i-D Magazine, recounting his early experimentation with fashion choices. “It was almost like I made up my own version of London on my own little body.”
i-D Magazine is a quarterly British publication that pridefully provides inspiration for all things fashion, music, art and youth culture.
Taking these innocent ideals and turning them into today’s current fashion has inspired consumers and admirers of Jeffrey’s work to take fashion less seriously.
New-age Club Kids, Scotty Sussman (a.k.a. Sussi) and Harry Charlesworth, have become the front-runners of Jeffrey’s LOVERBOY team as they parade around London club life breaking barriers between gender, comedy and art. Creating fantasies with their avant-garde makeup and ensembles, sometimes complete with ornate headdresses, Sussi and Charlesworth add a new flavor to the melting pot of fashions being turned out in the streets of London. Check them out here in i-D Magazine.
Speaking of streets, London streetwear model, Slick Woods, has made quite the impression on beauty standards and fashion in relation to how “the culture is so honest,” according to i-D Magazine. She can be found sporting Comme Des Garçon or anything from the latest Gypsy Sport collection.
A lot of the controversial topics being stirred within London’s fashion community have to do with the construct of gender, which creates a lot of backlash across the globe. In retaliation, many designers seek to build a bridge between the binary in hopes that the construct will become clear and can be further broken down.
“JW Anderson is one of the newest, prominent fashion designers today,” says Franklin Fraley, sophomore at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and self-proclaimed fashion photographer. “Through his ability to bend gender norms through his usage of design in both men’s and women’s wear.”
London has become the new epicenter of fashionable innovation and all for the underlying purpose of creating unity in a divided world.
