LOVERBOY's Defiant Return: A Celebration of Chaos and Creativity

Legend has it that, during a bloody war, Viking soldiers removed their shoes and crept, barefoot, into a Scottish camp. Their aim was to be as silent as snowfall.

They did not anticipate the thistle.

Sharp, defensive, and evolved to protect itself, the thistle pierced flesh and shattered stealth. Cries of pain gave the game away. In time, the thistle became the national flower of Scotland: a powerful symbol of resilience, vigilance, and unexpected strength.

Is any of it true? History is rarely that neat. That’s the trouble with big-R Romanticism. It can be artful. A little deceptive. A soft burnishing over gruesome facts.

Still, the thistle. We love the thistle. Prickly. Protective. Uncompromising. And if so, much of Scottish history is not, in fact, Scottish history after all, then what if we can write it? What if a seed of Scottish history was sown in London, in the grit and grime and gorgeousness of a label that gestated in an underground club night. The net and lace and wool and silk, the ripped denim, soft tweed, torn tartans. The blue faces, bleary eyes, sweat-soaked shirts on flailing limbs.

We carved out space with our bare hands, and in this dark moment of unrest and instability, we’ll do it again. We look to romanticism as structure, not nostalgia; you can’t have nostalgia for something you never lost. So, we pick up the pencil. Fill metres of sketchbook pages. Paint for miles. Pore over ancient texts, read between historic lines, replace instability with something solid.

You can see it in the clash of the tartans, the sleeves tied as sashes. A queer Scottish resistance, rising from the ashes.

In the palimpsest of bouclé, fuzz, mesh, every incarnation of LOVERBOY is layered here, in carefully curated mess. Hot, hourglass silhouettes, ruffled dresses, 80s cuts.

– “Before you leave the house, remove the last accessory you put on.”

– Absolutely not.

We want more. Do more. More textures. Bobbly crochet, soft moss, worn denim, slouch leather. More knits, and stack them: from mushroom spots to apple-green Fair Isle. We take what we have and we wear it with pride, yes, all of it, every last bit. That’s our form of luxury.

– Wait, how much is too much?

– Trick question. Never enough.

More ideas. Frankenstein turns tailor: oversized, spliced suits, where one jacket melds with another to create shapes you’ve never seen before, because what’s better than one jacket? That’s right, two jackets. Beanies are dissected and reassembled, half and half. We add sleeves to shirts and tie them around our hearts. We throw on a sweater. And a cardigan. And a scarf. Pull up tights, then socks, two pairs.

Why not.

We have a formula, but the outcome is never the same twice. They say madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Not at LOVERBOY. Here, we know that everything can change in a heartbeat; that our outfits will peel and dishevel as a night gets long, that we’ll tear our gowns and live with it, roll up a sleeve, scuff up a shoe, and love it. We are still showing up, as we always have, in defence, in defiance. The thistle.

The formula is: Laughter, Refusal, Care, Mess. It’s present in everything, from the delicate, enamelled bijoux at our necks, to Baby’s Berserk ringing live through the space, as LOVERBOY returns to Dover Street Market Paris, the home of our dear friends, who have supported us since day one, to stage not just a fashion show, but a happening. Times might get tough throughout the industry but its having friends like these in cities like this that are our lifelines.

A small cast of four models, friends and new friends, move through the space wearing LOVERBOY in its full state of madness and defiance. Around them, metres of hand-painted fabric, painted by Charles himself (in a giant scenic paint frame outside of London), envelop the room, transforming it into a pagan-punk environment. The space is immersive and communal, designed to be felt rather than observed.

The presentation echoes the energy of the original LOVERBOY club nights from over a decade ago, where fashion, music, bodies, and instinct collided without hierarchy. Past and present fold into one another here, layered like the clothes themselves.

What will come from all of this? You’ll have to find out, in the reminder that, while every day might be a battle, LOVERBOY has you covered, it will forever be for the weirdos by the weirdos.