Winking to 2016’s formative fashion moments and a childhood as a competitive disco dancer, the Central Saint Martins MA student’s second collection finds beauty in bad taste
- Who is it? Oliver Jeanes is a British designer who blends mischief and sensitivity, humour and vulnerability with his nostalgia-soaked designs
- Why do I want it? For his second collection, Jeanes tapped into the fringe and rhinestone-laden costumes worn during his childhood as a competitive freestyle disco dancer. Lycra, mesh, PVC and leather are transformed into electric looks that carry a tenderness
- Where can I find it? The collection is available via the label’s Instagram
Who is it? Ask about the kind of person that Oliver Jeanes designs his delightfully raucous clothes for and he gives an unexpected answer. “I think they’d be quite quiet. They’d walk into a room and have on these neon purple rhinestone leggings and a jacket, and maybe just stand in the corner until they’ve had a drink,” he says. “Awkward but sincere.” That tension – between the wanting to be seen and to disappear – is self-referential.
Growing up in Bradford, a city in the north of the UK, Jeanes says that the town’s lack of singular style inspired him. “I didn’t grow up having a hand-me-down Prada coat from my mum or anything,” he explains. “It’s more my experience with clothes from a mass cultural perspective. There wasn’t much identity – one person at school would have that one bag you’d like, then everyone had that bag.” His work draws on a very specific kind of 2016-era teenage longing: the teal-and-black Triangl bikini all over Pinterest, or the fuchsia-and-green parka from Era Istrefi’s Bonbon video. “There’s this idea of our generation’s uniform,” he says. “It’s taking these formative elements that we’ve experienced, and recasting them in a new emotional register.”
For Jeanes, one of those registers is the thrill of growing up as a competitive dancer. But it wasn’t stuffy ballroom waltzes or ballet’s exacting tendus that called to him, it was something a little more fabulous: freestyle disco dancing. “It is mental,” he laughs. “Eight girls and I would go on the floor in the most insane, over-the-top rhinestone costumes you’ve ever seen in your life and a questionable amount of fake tan. You’d go, throw yourself around the floor, and hope that one of the judges standing around would notice you.”
‘Disco dancing’ may be a misnomer – no one’s doing the hustle here. Instead, dancers race around a parquet ballroom floor, unleashing split jumps and illusion turns at random. It’s a battle to be seen, waged in so-bad-they’re-good leotards. “It requires an insane amount of talent and energy. There’s plenty of injuries, like getting a foot in your face,” he says. Jeanes stopped competing at 16 years old when Covid hit – luckily without any Tonya Harding-esque incidents – and went on to graduate from Central Saint Martins with a BA in fashion design and communication last year. His final collection was a precursor to this one, defining his brand’s mischievous yet sensitive attitude. A skirt from the collection made from towelling twisted into swans kissing was later worn by Lorde in Dazed.
Why do I want it? Designed ahead of starting his MA at Central Saint Martins, Jeanes’ second collection builds on his penchant for ironesty, and this time, his childhood as a competitive dancer is in the spotlight. Titled DKKQ – after Disco Kid King Queen, one of the biggest freestyle dance competitions in the UK – his time spent leaping under stage lights comes through in dancewear fabrics: spandex and mesh are stretched, pinned, ruched and embellished into something nostalgic but new. Take a glistening pink Lycra set, the top’s saucily frilled scoop neck paired with matching leggings, while a nude and navy bodysuit is showered in rhinestones and fringe. “I think it really pushes this almost embarrassingly bad element of taste to a point where it recentres back to being, in my opinion, quite chic,” he says.
Showy pieces are tempered by cool, swaggering PVC jackets and details. Embellished navy stirrup leggings demurely peek out from a red plastic coat, while a pale pink vinyl button-down bursts from a leather fuchsia skirt resembling a tulip. Worn together, there’s an awkwardness to it all, as though the models have dashed from dance class to an afterparty only to realise they’re overdressed. “Styling is the main process within my work. It’s very much a fitting every day, trying things on, collecting endless amounts of charity shop tat and vintage and piecing it all together,” Jeanes explains. “I’m not completely obsessed with the pattern-making side of things. For me, it’s much more about the overall world-building and narrative.” Through the flouncy layers, rhinestones and crinkly plastic, Jeanes reveals something vulnerable and tender. And perhaps that’s what great clothes have the power to do.
Where can I find it? The collection is available via the label’s Instagram.
