Oliver Jeanes, the Designer Mining the Pleasures of Bad Taste

Oliver Jeanes is a British designer whose work combines humour and vulnerability with nostalgia. His second collection draws on fringe and rhinestone-heavy costumes from his childhood as a competitive freestyle disco dancer. Materials such as lycra, mesh, PVC, and leather are transformed into electric looks that still carry tenderness. He describes the kind of person his clothes are for as someone who would enter a room wearing neon purple rhinestone leggings and a jacket, then stand quietly in the corner until they have a drink. The tension between wanting to be seen and to disappear is central to the designs. Growing up in Bradford, he was influenced by a lack of singular style and by mass cultural clothing experiences shared by everyone. He also references a 2016-era teenage uniform seen online, recast into a new emotional register.

"“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."

"“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.”"

"“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.” 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."

"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"

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