Matty Bovan (Q3341)
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Matty Bovan is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Matty Bovan |
Matty Bovan is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Organizing and executing a fashion show poses an expensive challenge for independent designers striving to make ends meet. This reality became apparent during London Fashion Week, where brands like Chopova Lowena, Supriya Lele, and Talia Byre chose to forgo the runway this season to navigate their financial constraints. Even seasoned designer Matty Bovan shifted to a digital showcase for his fall collection. Despite his fondness for putting together compelling live spectacles, Bovan discovered the process of crafting a digital presentation to be equally rewarding. He augmented it with a self-penned poem and self-directed film, enriching the overall experience.Last season, Bovan delved into Americana themes, pushing prom silhouettes to extremes, but for fall he shifted focus to his British roots. Here, traditional English textures and historical references took on a chaotic, macabre twist—all within the signature avant-garde, sculpture-like designs that have defined his work over the past 15 seasons. Reflecting on his inspiration, Bovan said during a preview: “I come from Yorkshire, surrounded by the English landscape. Yet, my fascination with portraiture from Tudor and Elizabethan eras has persisted since I was a child. This collection is an amalgamation of ancient tropes presented in a futuristic way, where sculptural shapes organically envelop the body.”At the heart of the collection lies a focus on tweed, particularly sourced from off-cuts provided by Linton Tweeds, a textile mill in Carlisle. Noteworthy pieces showcase an eclectic mix of frayed-edge tweeds, artfully fused together to achieve volume. Take, for example, the opening look—a blend of monochromatic houndstooth fabrics swallowing the neckline, featuring a pannier reminiscent of historical attire, yet presented in a miniskirt format. A deconstructed skirt suit motif, composed of panels pieced together to form a mound, offered an offbeat interpretation of chicness. Pleated, multi-colored deadstock fabrics were juxtaposed with crocheted tweed, while a commercially viable option included a hoodie crafted from boiled gold crushed velour and crocheted tweed. A standout tapestry jacket, ornate and intricately detailed, epitomized Bovan’s jarring aesthetic—a blend of brilliance and challenge through an extreme lexicon of color combinations.
For the film and lookbook imagery, shot at the historic Burton Agnes Hall in the East Riding of Yorkshire—where Bovan also served as his own model—it might seem that he was drawing from historical narratives. However, he clarified: “My creative process is entirely driven by emotion, so my narratives tend to be more abstract than one might expect. I envisioned each look as a character within a manor, with the house itself taking on a persona, rejecting each inhabitant. Each individual is somewhat trapped, resigned to their confinement within the walls.”Bovan demonstrated that designers can create a profoundly impactful collection, infused with personal narratives that transcend conventional understanding, without conforming to the standard structure of fashion show schedules. In this case, though, a static museum-like setting could be vital for each piece to be fully appreciated in the flesh.
23 February 2024
It’s not often that you dine in the crypt of a church while it is being used as the backstage area for a fashion show. For a lucky group of rubberneckers, Matty Bovan made that happen this evening. The backstage was situated in St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and with the exception of a 40-ish-seater dining table that ran through it, all appeared as backstages tend to. The beauty teams (Miranda Joyce, the Lisa Eldridge agency) and hair crew (Claire Grech) had mostly done their work but were still perfecting it. The stylist (Bovan himself) was zooming around between Ashley Graham, Winnie Harlow, and their fellow castmates, adding one last layer of scrutiny and care to looks that contained garments—Bovan’s 15th collection—that were clearly already the subjects of many hours of handiwork and creativity. Acielle was shooting like a trouper.Stopping for a moment to sit alongside Vogue Runway, Bovan said: “I love the idea of doing a show where the front row gets to see the behind the scenes, close up. And they get to see the textiles and the details.” His plan was a great one, with just one flaw: So rich was the Bistrotheque-authored lobster pie, and so zesty its gem salad, and so more-ish the Tanqueray No. Ten cocktails,that many of the guests were understandably as focused on the vittles as the details. However, as the lineup took shape, professionalism kicked in.Even in the dimness of backstage, a collection that Bovan said was “a beacon of light” during a tough year was luminescent with labor and thought. Each piece was conceived as a sculpture built around its wearer and a cladding of Calvin Klein underwear. The dresses were controlled explosions of upcycled fabric, bleached and overdyed, whose laboriously curated multitudinous scraps twisted and whorled around each other in order to ignite a whole. Embroidery on corsetry and Bovan-penned script inscribed a further seam of energy and meaning into them. Although created with immense craft and seriousness, the end was joyful and infectious: Choreographed by Simon Donnellon, the models moved into a small show space (we watched onscreen) to inhabit Bovan’s clothes with a series of verve-filled poses.So rich, so analog, and so instinctive is Bovan’s practice that you wonder how he knows when to stop working on a piece—that it is done. He said, “Well, it’s like doing a painting or sculpture. I keep going back, a day later, a week later: You know, it’s just a gut instinct.
” And he added, “In a world of digital and AI, I want to do real stuff—real life, physical. My world is complete fantasy, but it is here in reality.” Bovan is breaking the boundaries of convention in clothing like no one else.
16 September 2023
FollowingMatty Bovan’s foray to Milan last season, he returned for this one to show in one of London’s loveliest spots: Langan’s. Many fabulous creatures have enlivened the Michael Caine co-founded brasserie over the years—Bianca Jagger, Elton John, Joan Collins—but the 13 apparitions lounging in the satisfyingly ’70s, Ciroc-heaped bar upstairs were something else.Bovan said: “In the future, and already, AI is such a big part of design. I like the perverseness of going against that. Instead of following the AI trend I want to follow this idea of it being super hand, super off: how mistakes are going to be the new luxury.” Entitled Deep Space Nymphs, this collection’s intended vibe, said Bovan, was “baroque sci-fi hardcore,” with a Quay Brothers-informed edge of the sinister.As well as being 100% fashioned by Bovan’s hand, the collection was by his estimation 90% upcycled. “New” pieces included customized Dr. Martens, and in his knits were intertwined yarn both unused and previously used. Other raw ingredients included deadstock jackets from Alpha Industries and sailing brand 66 North, denim from Calvin Klein, used plastic that Bovan molded into eyewear at a university in York—“I think I got some kind of poisoning”—and customized Oakley sunglasses. There were also safety pins, thousands of them, used to work into the down-filled sailing jackets—“which made me think of Vivienne”—and deadstock fabrics Bovan had purchased including a marvelous golden quilted fabric and a floral jacquard he’d hoarded through the pandemic.Everything was worked via ribbon, paint, pin, and net to a folkish intensity. Silhouettes were blown-up and vaguely piratic: they had a chaotic grandeur. Available was a ‘zine in which were pictured 15 further “b-side” looks—containing many potential sleeper hits—shot on Bovan at his local church hall. These Deep Space Nymphs looked extraordinary as they lounged in comfort in the velvet furnished, Kubrick-futurist space. What you couldn’t detect, however, were any “mistakes.” Instead the designer used his real intelligence to push the envelope of beautiful imperfection as a riposte to artificial flawlessness.
18 February 2023
Talk about going out with a bang. British import Matty Bovan brought his joyous, maximalist spirit to Milan Fashion Week this afternoon, presenting a collection of his signature psychedelically collaged looks, amped up with the addition of corsetry, denim, and accessories reissued from the Dolce & Gabbana archives.Bovan is the latest emerging talent to benefit from the largesse of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. Within the past year, the designers have invited Korean-born Londoner Sohee Park to show in their Milan space and collaborated with British-American up-and-comer Harris Reed on a headpiece for Iman at the Met Gala. From their front-row seats at the show in Milan’s Navigli neighborhood (think Williamsburg, only with canals, not the East River), they emphasized the importance of supporting the younger generation. Dolce and Gabbana lent Bovan their seamstresses, shared production resources, put up money for the presentation, and lent him the archive reissues, but didn’t get involved with his process. “You need to give young people their freedom,” Gabbana said. “The creative moment is very personal.”No one who has ever seen a Bovan show in London could doubt that he exercises his creative freedom. But in Milan, his irrepressible aesthetic really stood out. “There’s a lot going on,” he said at a preview. “I’ve been through quite a dark time in my personal life. I was in this kind of eye of the storm, and obviously creativity is my savior. The idea was harnessing chaos, harnessing this surrealist magic eye.”A single look could combine a corset painted by Bovan in a checkerboard pattern, slashed jeans with a crochet appliqué (also handmade by the designer), and an adjustable-sleeve harness constructed from a metallic logo brocade. Another might team a corset with a pannier skirt, the sides and middle made from multiple pieces of clashing fabrics. There were extras in the form of lambswool jacquard knit scarves, vintage telephone cords, and sequins made from 30% recycled fabric.The high and low, couture and street of it all is key for Bovan. “I like that friction,” he said. But what was so winning here, given all the megabrands on the schedule, was the personal aspect of his output. Bovan’s mom made the papier-mâché jewelry. “I really try to get across how touched by hands it all is,” he said.
25 September 2022
As Storm Eunice blew over London today, Matty Bovan and his guests sought refuge in the crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square. Aptly, he titled his collection Cyclone: a force that causes “chaos and destruction—even beauty—in the wake of its power.” He was talking about the pandemic, but you could say the same for the organized chaos that embodies his work. Some find it messy, others soulful. This season, it was punk for the globalized generations: the kids who have grown up as immersed in other cultures as in their own and feel a need to rebel against said cultures’ symbols of patriotism.Enter America, a place—Bovan argued—that has so many cultural divisions which all lay claim to its national iconography that those symbols have become universal. “They’re very fun to subvert. Like England, they don’t really belong to anyone,” he shrugged. The Yorkshire-based designer was wearing a Carrie Bradshaw-style necklace with the name Derek on it in homage to his American musician boyfriend, who spends part of his work researching undiscovered folklore music from America. Together, they spent two months in his hometown of Bridgewater, Connecticut this season (“it’s where Mia Farrow lives”) where Bovan found inspiration for his first collection based on American culture.How did Connecticut react to the designer’s appearance? “Well, I’m kind of used to it. But I’m not ridiculously out-there. I still wear jeans and…” he paused. “I mean, it still looks weird. But it was good. It was fun. I’ve looked at England for so long, I needed to look at something else. America is very easily parodied and there’s a lot of iconic symbols—the star, the stripe—which I like to play with.” As far as American socio-political commentary goes, his collection didn’t escape cliché territory. But that didn’t make it any less captivating. Within the ripped-up sensibility of Bovan’s work (which is often how it feels, even if it isn’t) his various treatments of the American flag—hand-painted on jeans, as a train on a jacket, as star cut-outs queerly stitched all over a dress with a naval military cape—very much read as punk.As did a series of repurposed classics from collaborations including Vivienne Westwood, Adidas, Converse All-Star, Alpha Industries, and Calvin Klein.
The feeling was echoed in the de- and reconstruction of bomber jackets and parkas—some spliced together—and a beautiful hand-painted blouson with the words “Hopeful” and “Bad Dreams” spelled out within its abstract motif. But the political element here was above all in the casting. Not in Irina Shayk, who opened the show in a repurposed Roksanda Ilincic puffball gown, but in all the bulky frames that followed. Through a conventional lens, these bodies read as masculine. Dressed in Bovan’s genderless garments, which traverse the body-conscious and the dramatically draped, they came across as an interesting comment on male roles from an American perspective.A few weeks ago, Sean Penn incited fury when he argued that “cowardly genes… lead to people surrendering their jeans and putting on a skirt.” You wonder what he would think of Bovan’s young bodybuilder dressed in a stretch velvet body-con dress emblazoned with an all-over “faux butch” USA print, worn under a tight, deconstructed floral pioneer apron. Looks like that, and many more, definitely felt like a comment on a kind of Trumpian male ego we still sometimes see coming out of contemporary American culture, from movies to music and indeed politics. You couldn’t help but wonder if Bovan—who identifies as male and dresses like a magical folkloric creature—did have some personal experiences of the more jarring kind during his time Connecticut.
18 February 2022
A manically colorful glamour vibrates through Matty Bovan’s spring ’22 collection. No matter that it’s all built at home: His ingeniously collaged giant crocheted blanket patches, extravagantly pouffed upcycled-fabric ball gowns, and madly unconventional forms of knitting manifestly call to the new youth-wish for ultra-extreme party-dressing.“I suppose it’s a reaction against last season,” he said on the phone from his studio in York. Last season in Matty-land was a struggle with the sturm and drang of the uncontrollable forces of nature—imagery suggesting high seas and shipwrecks. This one—which he’s named “Hypercraft” —started out with a cache of “hazy family photographs from the 1970s.” Hence his excursion into “granny knitting” and retro-wallpaper patterns culled from vintage Sanderson upholstery fabrics, David Hicks designs, and carpets “reminiscent ofThe Shining.”Compared to a year ago, he said, the task of getting things outsourced in the U.K. is more difficult than ever for an independent designer (a talent drain of skilled European workers due to Brexit is partly to blame). But nothing daunted, he declares himself quite happy to be self-sufficient: “I really pushed myself. I’d say 97% of the collection was made in the studio, and I’ve worked again with an amazing knitter locally. There’s always a way if you’re creative.”As one of the participants in London Fashion Week’s hybridized physical and digital schedule, Bovan is still creating his world long distance via a lookbook and a film. Directed by Ruth Hogben, the video’s a surreally flashing mashup of clothes set against blown-up ’70s dollhouse interiors, with cuckoo clocks going off and grandfather clocks chiming. Bovan says he’s quite happy with experimenting with film, a necessity which he turned into a creative opportunity during the lockdown times. That’s him all over, really—always finding ways to make the best of things. Still, there’s no doubt that London audiences are dying for the moment he decides to bring all that exuberance back to one of his full-on fashion performances again.
17 September 2021
The smeary, glitchy psychedelic color effects that work their way through Matty Bovan’s fall video are a digital analogy for the vigorous free-form way that he’s always scrambled color, pattern, paint, and garments as if they’re materials on an artist’s palette. Still, whatever wizard tech program arranged it, IRL it came from a church hall in York, shot on a few models Bovan had asked in from neighboring towns. The clothes themselves were collaged as always in his home studio several hundred miles away from London.One thing the pandemic has underlined in preventing physical fashion weeks is that the location of designers has pretty much ceased to matter. Separation anxieties apart, that’s a boon in disguise for localists like Bovan. Creative flow uninterrupted, he made even more of an effort to source regional British materials, including cloth from traditional U.K. mills like Hainsworth and giant sparkly bits made by The Sustainable Sequin Company, and had a hand-knitter around the corner from him knitting up a storm. (He’s a contender in this year’s Woolmark Prize, and his argyles and machine-knit sweaters flagged that.) One more thing about local opportunities: Instead of flown-in supermodels—who were always enthusiastic walkers in Bovan’s Fashion Week shows—equally beautiful people from around the area got in on the action this time. So that’s all good, as a support for community jobs and morale.
19 February 2021
When the worst comes to the worst, can creativity save us? Everyone who has turned to do-it-ourselves at-home crafting during the pandemic knows that it’s become at the very least a joyfully constructive way of spending hours of solitude. In which case, Matty Bovan, who has always been British fashion’s home-crafting outlier, finds himself at the inspirational edge of a cultural movement. “I’ve liked getting back to grips with being self-sufficient. I’ve been locked up, like everyone else, here in York,” he says. “But I wanted to work on something that felt positive. So I wanted to make something that looked at elements of England that I really loved as a child.”This week, Bovan would normally have got on a train from the north of England with a bundle of the clothes he makes in his late grandma’s house, and they’d be twirling on a London runway, worn by an enthusiastic support group of international models. This time, he took over a 19th-century chapel in his hometown and set about draping and hand-sewing a spontaneously sculptural collection on dummies inspired by “Elizabeth the First, the Tudors, the history of York, and my grandmother’s yellow floral carpet and curtains.” Then he sent out a deliberately lo-fi video of himself and an accomplice making it. “I think that showing the process is really important,” he remarks. “ I’ve always done things on a small scale. I think it kind of shows future generations that lots of people are creating fashion this way, for the love of it.”Hence, perhaps, the key to the title he chose: Future. Olde. England. In a way, this collection is an uninterrupted continuation of the flow of thought that has produced the increasingly huge, wonky patchwork structures that bring the house down at London Fashion Week. This time, he piled on Celtic-knot graphics inspired by medieval tiles, Liberty Tana Lawn prints left over from his collaboration with the store, old-school rugby shirt stripes, Shakespearian doublet jackets, flags, and heraldic shields, topped off with jewelry contributions from his mother, Plum Bovan. Layers of the histories he was obsessed with as a kid, resiliently and colorfully reconfigured.In another sense, his energetic ability to continue to create stands as retort to all those who didn’t see the point of a designer who has stuck by his choice to make handmade things in a place far from any fashion capital.
Now that localism and slow production are being counted as virtues, and the fashion systems that he never wanted to fit into are in collapse, the part he’s playing in the rich tapestry of fashion history really does point toward a better future.
18 September 2020
Matty Bovan, one of the least digital designers on the planet, may have accidentally set off a meme of the season. Scroll to Lily McMenamy in look 24, and there she is, sashaying forth in a pink pseudo-prom frock with a headdress forming a mobile pair of drapes around her. “Why not make your own entrance wherever you go? Now you can!” chuckled Stephen Jones, who’d gleefully conspired to rig up the three curtain-framed exits for Bovan’s finale.“Off-world” was a key phrase in Bovan’s press notes, with the further addendum that he was representing “an out-of-body experience.” It’s no good searching for logical explanations or narratives. If there’s one thing Bovan stands for, it’s the liberty to roam in the realm of free association. We live in a time of chaos. His collections hold up a smashed handmade mirror to it.One facet might be satirizing the narcissistic gaze of social media—why else the Insta-ready look-at-me face frames? Another angle begs the question about what fashion shows are for, anyway. “Real versus fake, fantasy versus reality,” Bovan extemporized, as other models were maneuvering through the backstage crowd, trying not to poke people with the pannier sticks that were seesawing from their hips. “I think it’s important to challenge the silhouette of the body. Have you ever seen knitwear in that shape?” he laughed. “People never think knitwear is going to come like this. Part of my job is to push people’s barriers about what they feel is acceptable and unacceptable.”Bovan spends months in his home studio in York experimenting on his own, collaging, layering, draping, knitting, and throwing together whatever shapes come to him. The enjoyment he gets out of that aesthetic anarchy is clearly the main point in being a designer, to him. What he comes back with has a dynamic, effervescent energy in the runway moment—and a community-connected magnetism that has his shows packed to the rafters with multigenerational, multi-gendered friends and family.In the collection’s mix this time were upcycled Fiorucci denims and Swarovski crystals, Liberty prints, and baby doll dresses. It’s a very British small-scale affair, all this, of course. Yet over time, small-scale, locally produced, and handcrafted pieces that can only be reproduced in a few iterations have become the new definition of luxury. “People are much more open to one-offs and far more switched on to knowing where things come from now,” he observed.
Against all the dystopian angst in the world, his show reflected a glimmer of hope.
14 February 2020
Just as Prime Minister Boris Johnson was doing his PR rounds attempting to whip up North Country support in Yorkshire today (and being heckled to get back down to lead theParliament he’s suspended) Matty Bovan, York’s finest free fashion advocate, was simultaneously down south showing his collection at London Fashion Week. An ironic geographical swap in the current Brexit mess, if ever there was one.In these post-truth times, it’s a cliché that all political points of view depend on the personal lens you’re looking through. Bovan’s models had feature-distorting rectangular lenses fixed to their heads—lenticular devices that magnified their faces until they resembled inhuman, computer-generated creatures, “but in real life,” he volunteered. “Although when you’ve got them on, you can’t really see where you’re going.” This clinching metaphor for our confused, bewildering, short-sighted times had been whipped out of milliner Stephen Jones’s arsenal of materials for a collection Bovan had named Hope and Fear. “They’re actually used in hospitals during surgery. So that they can look into wounds while they’re operating,” he added, with a slight shudder. “I know, weird.”Checking back on Bovan’s emergence as a designer London loves—he had his first show with Fashion East in September 2016—it turns out that his whole career dates from the year that the result of the Brexit referendum began to tear Britain apart, the one that saw the election of Donald Trump. It’s sobering to think that there’s a generation that has come to adulthood in the last three years who’ve known almost nothing but scarily divisive times, and hardly surprising that Bovan was early on prefiguring dystopian scenarios in his shows.The secret of his charm, however, is that he’s equally a reacher for jolly escapism, a believer in living in the country, and a new-generation practitioner of old-fashioned home crafts. “To be honest, there’s something just around the corner that we all know will be quite severe,” he commented. “But here we all are in London, making fabulous shows, which of course I love.”Perhaps only such a mind can throw motocross trousers, military flight suits, ditsy Liberty florals, hospital scrubs, and thoughts of Bloomsbury Group Edwardiana into the melting pot.
What came out of the melee was actually the cleanest, slickest collection he’s ever made, proving that he can indeed cut a complicated pair of patchworked trousers and tailor a bomber jacket, as well as go all out with the wonky romanticism of the Liberty print dresses and puff-sleeved blouses he’s made his own.Within it all, you could see quite clearly what will sell: that new design of trousers, the Liberty print skirt with a flippy hem made flippier by means of a boned hemline, the leg o’ mutton–sleeve tops, and quite possibly the flat lozenge-shaped bags he’s fixed on belts. For the first time, these were wholly Bovan’s designs, rather than customized Coach bags donated by his friend Stuart Vevers. “I’ve got them made in Lancashire, they’re really nice people,” he said. “So, yes, I can really make and sell them. I hope people like them, because they’re very practical. They’re what I’d wear myself.” When it comes down to it, Bovan really does have a sensible, pragmatic plan for a way forward plotted out, and any woman could see it. It’s a pity—a tragedy more like—that the same can’t be said of the politicians who are responsible for the impending fate of the U.K.
13 September 2019
Be it upside down, inside out, lopsided, poufed-up, or layered with crafty non sequiturs, what Matty Bovan does has cast a spell over London fashion. Somehow, there’s an indomitably sunny capacity for hands-on, craft-y enjoyment in his character, which breaks through in his collections—but then again, it’s always against the murky background of contemporary British reality as he lives it, up in York, his hometown in the North.This time, his concoction was a brew of Brexit with a handful of medieval witchcraft, and a pinch of anger thrown in: “An ode to England, really.” He said he’d been triggered by receiving a flyer for cut-price furniture through his letterbox. It was addressed to his late grandmother, whose house he’s now working in. “It had this headline, ‘In Uncertain Times, This Is a Cert!’ which I thought was so disgusting and perverse and hilarious, I had to use it for this collection.”Bovan’s Liberty-fabric-swathed crinolines, puffed sleeves, crocheted cobwebs, and squared-off knitwear shapes (these sometimes reminiscent of domestic loose covers or rugs) mark him out as a latter-day son of Vivienne Westwood. That’s fine—she’s a Northerner, too—and she gave Bovan a hearty personal benediction at his last show, praising his DIY craftiness, and hailing him as a new punk. The idea of witchcraft spoke to him, as it had to her, way back in the ’80s—in this case, after Bovan had been roaming Pendle Hill in Lancashire, the site of 17th-century village accusations, trials, and hangings of women, England’s own equivalent of the hysteria of the Salem witch trials.His crinolined coven carried whittled sticks and odd talismanic pieces of jewelry. “It wasn’t a direct reference, I didn’t want to do witches’ cloaks and hats,” he said. Yet he hadn’t plucked the reference out of thin air. “It’s been in my head, the scapegoating of people that goes on at the minute. The way some people have no way of pleading their case—and that’s it.”What did he mean? Something to do with the present-day power of social media to mete out mob justice, or the violation of human rights going on apace in the modern world? Both, probably. The suggestion hovered there over the postshow conversation.Still, where some of his earlier collections have been out-and-out dystopian, separatist visions, this one showed distinct signs of maturity.
Bovan actually graduated in knitwear, and this time he showed that clearly, in jacquard sweaters and skirts in patterns he described as “crests [and] spaceships. I like things that are like hieroglyphs, Roman numerals, words with hidden meanings. Like Keith Haring, really.” One piece was emblazoned with a blowup of his own face, with another male face on top. “Oh, that’s my right hand, Greg,” he laughed. “We had to get a two-together rail card to go to the factory in Leicester, to make it cheaper. It was almost like bizarre mug shots, which was fun.”That’s it, about the charm of Matty Bovan, really. He makes fun out of living in dreary, divisive times, expresses the ambivalence of the British towards the state of their own country, and makes all sorts of people want to come together to join in his jolly homespun endeavor. That goes for the lady crochet expert in Yorkshire as much as it does for Liberty, Stephen Jones for the hats, and collaborations with Gina and Coach on accessories.
15 February 2019
We’re not going to worry too much here about decoding the meanings of the show Matty Bovan put forth tonight. It was delightful—delight being so rare at the moment that it captured something precious—perhaps a new form of that devalued word,luxury. “Yeah, it was very optimistic, very joyful,” said Bovan backstage to an audience blown away by the sight of his multilayered, poufed-up, crinolined ball gowns, and crazy-elegant towering headdresses made from all kinds of DIY rubbish.It was a celebration of something quite deep in the rebellious British psyche: When backs are against the wall—Brexit, austerity, and social inequalities roiling as they are now—creativity will come out fighting. In Bovan’s press release he stated it: “I have a lot of conflicting thoughts, a lot of unrest about the political climate we live in. A lot of people do. The only thing I can do in response to that is bang a drum, hard, for the idea of being yourself.”The worry with Bovan is that his shows thus far have could have been categorized as all scene and styling, a cover for a raw prodigious talent which might not result in much commercial potential. But with this one something else came through. Looking at the slim, multi-patterned, multicolored jersey dresses and sweaters—after all, that was his specialty at Central Saint Martins—you could clearly see what he can sell.It was a London scene of mega proportions, though. It is sometimes demeaning—or at least distracting—for a designer to have a celebrity front row which hogs all of the attention from a show. But it was something of a whole other order to have Vivienne Westwood and her husband Andreas Kronthaler in the house, sitting alongside Bovan’s parents, with Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, the legendary designer Antony Price, and the goddess London DJ Princess Julia further down the line. With Stephen Jones backstage as a gleeful collaborator on the rose trellis, feathered and domestic-utensil headgear, there was the electric energy of an older anarchic ’80s British community rising in recognition of a force after their own hearts.There was a time when generations never spoke to one another—that’s over. Somehow, the political situation is causing an open alliance between creative people who positively revel in helping each other out. Bovan has plenty of friends who are willing him on.
This season, the collaboration he’s forged with Stuart Vevers at Coach over several seasons has resulted in a line of signature Coach logo-print bags adorned with Bovan’s artwork—as of now commercially available atMatchesFashion.com.The real culmination of the evening, though, was witnessed backstage when Vivienne Westwood grabbed Bovan to speak to a camera crew she was taking around as part of a documentary she is making. She hugged him, saying, “This is my friend Matty. He’s a punk, and what’s more, he’s an activist. The old ones, it was all a bit vague. He’s wonderful. Can you tell it to the camera, what you think about the government, Matty?” He didn’t hesitate. “They only care about money,” he said. “They squeeze the poor and only care about the rich.”
14 September 2018
How amazing to think that this tatty grandeur—wonky crinolines, balloon headdresses, and all—should have come out of a suburban garage in York. That’s where Matty Bovan, a star alum of Central Saint Martins, lives, in the north of England, with his parents Plum and Nick, who long ago surrendered the family outhouse to their son and his prolific need to create things. This was Bovan’s first solo show after three seasons with Fashion East; a tribute to his beloved grandmother, who passed away last summer. She was a big influence on him, having taught him to knit and crochet when she looked after him in the summer holidays. “So, it was about my grandma, this strong woman, and this North Yorkshire world of walks on the moors,” said the designer.While it might not look exactly slick to new eyes, this was a relatively pared-down, grown-up collection for Bovan, as he started off thinking about Northern English standards of smart-lady dressing. He took British tweeds and treated them to his version of tailoring, with cutaway jackets and jodhpurs for striding moors and taking tea. Far less student-nightclubby than before, the theme gave his imagination full rein to go a touch more elegant—there was a mash-up of at-home print dresses and blouses, and a great bleached denim dressing gown. Then there were collaged-together pileups of voluminous fabric and spidery-knit ball gowns—five of them, each with a helium-party-balloon-filled headdress, courtesy of Stephen Jones. “I suppose it’s about carrying the weight of the world on your head—but in a light way,” Bovan laughed.A sense of the determination to have fun against the odds has always been a thread in Bovan’s work. This collection had less of the dystopian primitivism about it; less of the chaos. It’s the kind of creativity which stands fully in the British tradition. There were echoes of Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, and the ’80s designers Mark and Syrie (the pub beer mats on a ball gown, spelling BOVAN). Now, it will get included in plenty of more establishment-magazine shoots. Not that Bovan’s likely to sell out to mainstream manufacturing standards anytime soon. His pleasure and his creativity is all about the handmade—mostly, pieces made by his own fair hand, back in that garage in York. He’s against mass production and pro doing things in a small way, but as time goes on, those are values fashion is coming round to appreciate.
17 February 2018