HOW DOES CHARLES JEFFREY PORTRAY SATIRE WITHIN GARMENT FORM?

As stated within the previous response, Charles Jeffrey implements a sense of humour and youthfulness to his brand through its marketing, promotional and storytelling features. Nonetheless, I believe this is heightened through garment form, especially through colour and pose. Looking at his Spring 2021 collection, which was created in the midst of lockdown, it is evident that Jeffrey has imposed a fun element to the imagery as to lighten the dark moments the world was enveloping. Through vivid colour clashing and psychedelic prints, he employed the fantastical photography of Tim Walker to enhance a distorted perception of his narrative. Tim Walker has been a great inspiration for me in relation to photography and how images can be injected with fun, yet still have a depth to their story. I would love to be able to create such power within my FMP.

The recent AW23 collection by Charles Jeffrey is a great example of satire within a dark narrative. ‘Engine Room’ comprises of “a unique combination of stark realism, satire and surrealist fantasy” (Williams, 2023) as an ode to John Byrne’s ‘The Slab Boys’. Interpreting his own rendition of the playwriters copy, Charles Jeffrey produced a 3-piece theatrical presentation celebrating Scotland, its workers and the renaissance man and woman. Fashioning a class system of characters, Jeffrey introduced the “workers” (the middle class) carrying paraffin lamps with soot-effect makeup and wearing protective gear, reflective of the arduous conditions they endure, the “posers” who represented the elite wore sartorial blazers, mustard yellows, and inverted tartan prints. The “Snakes” (the gossip merchants and rebellious characters of the city) wore outlandish outfits, which subverted every other look through block shades of red, black, white, and newspaper print- the source of medium for their gossiping. This collection demonstrated to me how satire is effectively utilised within fashion to segregate class systems and how it could be useful in my work for mocking the current societal pressures for Generation Alpha as well as the segregation of this group from other generations according to the underclass sociology theory.

On a side note, the styling of newspaper reminded me of John Galliano’s viral newspaper dress he designed for Dior! Which makes me ponder if he may be a significant influence on Charles Jeffrey for storytelling and club kid references as well…