Boxing Clever
My introduction to seminal human's wear brand JORDANLUCA was their 2018 London Fashion Week debut at what was the then gender-specific LFW menswear collections.
Showing their "Angry Staffy" collection at the British Fashion Council's "Discovery Lab", the presentation was a visceral shock to the system with models of both sexes having their heads shaved to the soundtrack of a poet who strode menacingly across the floor and whose spoken word sent chills down the spine. It was a singularly unique experience that remains one of my all-time London Fashion Week highlights. I have followed their progress ever since, from a Tudor-inspired runway show in the Victorian splendour of Shoreditch Town Hall to a lockdown video catwalk staged in a junkyard. Post- pandemic, the brand has chosen to show physically in Milan, a fitting relocation for the design duo Jordan Bowen and Luca Marchetto, who take their inspiration from the subcultural street style of London and the meticulous craftsmanship of Italian heritage tailoring.
For F/W 2023, JORDANLUCA have chosen to blow apart the societal stereotypes and cultural constraints of both gender-based and gender-free clothing, simply designing garments for humans. They have, however, continued to reference those elements of British working-class life first explored with "Angry Staffy". In this instance, collaborating with Lonsdale, the mass-market sports brand previously beloved of boxers and 80s London lads. The distinctive Lonsdale logo was subsequently appropriated by the queer community for whom its screamingly straight antecedents provided the T-shirt that was to be the final piece of the jigsaw that completed the partly ironic and partly self-preservative Y2k gay uniform of a shaven head, MA1 jacket and DM boots.
Channelling their encyclopaedic knowledge of streetwear's cultural codes, Jordan Bowen and Luca Marchetto have reimagined this queer fetish fantasy for 2023 incorporating a Lonsdale x JORDANLUCA capsule component within their collection. A component which features a long-line puffer coat emblazoned with the Lonsdale lion, triple-layered Lonsdale underwear, skirts, knee-length old-school boxing shorts and a leather jacket partially emblazoned with the Lonsdale logo.
It's a collaboration which celebrates the movement of the queer dance floor as much as the boxing ring, and this principle extends throughout the entirety of the collection, which is inspired by the philosopher Slavoj Zizek who questions whether humankind can outrun the concurrent catastrophes which bedevil our world.
“It’s a collaboration which celebrates the movement of the queer dance floor as much as the boxing ring,”
With nowhere to go but forward, JORDANLUCA have designed an assemblage of pieces which include a "bulldog" shoulder, creating a body language which mirrors and manifests humankind's determination to push through and overcome multiple pressures. This sense of forward movement is one of the collection's keynote motifs, from skirts and dresses to denims with elongated trains and fresco wools with crude pleating at the front.
With gender abandoned and the duo drawing on what sociologist Erving Goffman describes as the "frame" that space where the self and public role dramatically converge, JORDANLUCA have reimagined wardrobe staples to magical effect. The humble hoodie is turned inside out and printed with digital fairies to reflect how, online, the most ordinary of things can be made to look extraordinary, while military camouflage is reinvented in playful pink. Other staples such as shirts and ties are knotted on the shoulder to give this traditionally most heteronormative of combinations an off-kilter and edgy silhouette.
As befits designers who not only display a painstaking devotion to craftsmanship but also to the entirety of the runway look, the accompanying show footwear was perfection, with metal heel-capped cowboy boots, snakeskin winkle pickers and Lonsdale boxing boots to the fore.
The eclectic ease which enables JORDANLUCA to marshal an array of disparate references and meld them into a cohesive cohort of clothing is testament to a design duo at the very top of their game. For FW23, they have drawn from the boxing game. Whether or not their Lonsdale collaboration sees that brand emerge from its current marketplace of piled-high bargain Ts in Sports Direct warehouses to reclaim some of its 80s football casual cachet, it's a moment in time that works fearlessly and fabulously well.
There's no doubt that JORDANLUCA'S signature razor-sharp tailoring and eye for anarchic anachronisms will see the brand boxing clever for years to come.
Click on images below to see more of the collection:
Credits:
Stylist: Samia Giobellina @samiagiobellina
Casting: IM Casting @irene_manicone
Hair: Anthony Turner @anthonyturnerhairMake-up: Inge Grognard @ingegrognard
Art Director: William Ndatira @williamcult
Producer: Antony Waller @ant_waller
Runway Photography: Jason Loyd-Evans @jasonlloydevanRunway Photography: Stefan Knauer
Styling Assistant: Sara Maria Perilli @saramariaperilli
Styling Assistant: Micol Ceretta @micooooooool
Special Thanks to:
Agency Eleven @agencyeleven
