How Matty Bovan became one of the UK’s most exciting and subversive designers

Paul Flynn meets Matty Bovan
Paul Flynn13 September 2018

In the two years since Matty Bovan decamped from London back to his native York to set up a studio in his late grandmother’s modest suburban semi, the young British fashion designer has learned to calmly navigate the train commute to King’s Cross.

Because the seats reach their immediate eye level, passing small children will stare at him; absorbed by his make-up, kaleidoscopic hair and DIY wardrobe of homemade knitwear radicalised by his own, inimitable hand.

‘It happened again today,’ he says with a smile. ‘I find it funny now.’ On the train this morning, too, he caught the attention of a gang of beery lads in the corridor. ‘Stag do. They were shouting at me, trying to give me a thumbs up, but I had my music on. I don’t see it as malicious. People think you’re desperate to be looked at. It’s not that at all.’

Bovan, 28, is one of the shining new stars of British fashion. He is normcore’s enemy, voguish vandalism’s friend. His 2015 graduation year from Central Saint Martins included the singular talents of his friends, Charles Jeffrey — who has built a world of buccaneering, wasted, rococo nightlife through his brand — and Rottingdean Bazaar, which has created collections that have as much in common with whip-smart social satirists such as Mike Leigh and Julia Davis as they do the mannequins of Dover Street Market.

Bovan’s logo is an indeterminate four-legged beast: ‘People see a pig, a cat, but it is a non-creature creature, almost a cave painting.’ His work playfully blurs the boundary between art and fashion.

‘I see each season as a universe that I have to populate. You have to transport yourself and the people watching it, otherwise there’s no point in doing a show.’ Invited to curate a room by Leeds City Council for the current London Design Biennale at Somerset House, he said, ‘I’m not going to just fill it with clothes. That would be boring.’ So Just/Unjust takes in sculptures, video projections and found objects inspired by British folklore, witchcraft and Aesop’s fables.

Backstage at Bovan’s AW18 show

His work is deeply considered, crafted mostly by hand. Though his is the golden ticket at LFW — Erin O’Connor and Noomi Rapace were in attendance last time — the most important front row seats will be reserved for his parents. He is stocked at Matchesfashion.com but has so far played his commercial hand close to his chest. His famous fans include Marc Jacobs, with whom he interned during his industry year at Saint Martins, and Rita Ora, who appeared at last year’s MTV Europe Music Awards in a gown he created.

Bovan’s fashion life began with a trip to a local Tammy Girl, when he was the same age as the kids who stare at him now. ‘I remember thinking, why do girls get all this choice of colour and shape when boys have to dress in navy and green?’ As he’s speaking, in the incongruous, wipe-clean surrounds of St Pancras’ Pret a Manger, a man is gazing at him quizzically in the manner of someone who has just spotted a unicorn.

Bovan became accustomed to these social transactions at a young age. When he was 10 he bleached his hair with Sun-In before a family holiday to Crete. ‘It turned platinum. I remember going to the hairdressers and saying, “But it’s natural!”’ He developed a teenage obsession with Madonna, possibly inspired by the grandmother in whose house he now lives and works. ‘She could be ferocious. She used to say, “I never apologise because I’m never wrong.” I wish I’d inherited a bit of that, but I’m so British, always saying sorry.’ He mists over. ‘I do miss her.’

Matty Bovan wears a mixture of Matty Bovan AW18 and archive pieces

At 16, Bovan began buying fabric from Leeds Market. ‘I’d get 10 outfits out of 10 metres.’ He learned to knit on a knackered Brother machine given to him by his paternal grandmother. The twin pursuit of making his own clothes and fashioning his identity went from there: a journey of uncompromised self-expression in the DIY tradition of early Vivienne Westwood. ‘I’ve been making my own clothes for so long now, I forget that some people can’t.’

His make-up habit started at 17 (‘one eye only’) at York College. It has intensified since. ‘Walking to the station today, this old man was staring at me, literally with disgust. I thought, “Yep, that’s okay.” Because I don’t like the status quo and I never have.’

His mantra is striking serious sartorial chords. After showing three collections for Fashion East, his AW18 show earlier this year was his first solo outing. It looked like his grand leap forward. His craft and flair has begun to look like a strangely commercial proposition outside of its raw influence.

Matty Bovan's AW18 London Fashion Week show 

Model of the moment Adwoa Aboah was the first one out. ‘She’s just adorable,’ he says. His castings have included other ES Magazine cover girls, including Edie Campbell, Georgia May Jagger and the future Mrs Justin Bieber, Hailey Baldwin. ‘They’re all super down-to-earth and normal. Then you zoom out and it’s a bit… wow.’ Super-stylist and Love magazine editor Katie Grand, with whom Bovan has worked closely since graduating, acts as an invaluable creative consultant, opening doors that might otherwise remain shut to such singular fashion vision. The captivatingly creative milliner Stephen Jones provided the show with its extraordinary climax: five-foot headpieces fashioned from outsized balloons, held together with mesh and attached to the models’ heads like aerated, outsized brain cells bursting out of their swimming caps.

The message was distinct. This was not just a fashion show. ‘There’s no point in me doing a show if you can go down to M&S and buy it afterwards,’ he says. ‘I’ve never understood the point of that. It has to be a weird, subverted world full of new textures. It has to get me excited.’ Prior to the event, the sight of all the old punk stalwarts and London scenesters who had peopled Pam Hogg’s front row scuttling down Kingsway to Bovan’s show felt like the passing of a baton, from one generation to the next.

Adwoa Aboah backstage at one of Matty Bovan's shows

For his SS19 presentation this week, there is suddenly expectation. ‘Did I think winter was a good show?’ he says. ‘Yes. Do I think I can do better? Yes.’ Bovan is a gleefully undaunted and impressive young man. ‘The work is me. I just have to keep myself interesting by keeping the clothes interesting. You can’t get too bogged down by the moment when people start to get interested.’

He recently completed a collaboration with American label Coach on a line of bags, which goes on sale at Matchesfashion.com this month. If this shows commercial savvy, he doesn’t intend to let it dampen his vision. He says that in a recent meeting about headpieces for the new collection, with Jones and Grand on board, ‘we were all saying, “Let’s go a bit further, let’s make it creepier.” All the right words were being passed around.’

‘Ultimately, it’s about craft,’ he continues. ‘I’ve pushed it this time, with technology and by hand. If it’s gross, let’s see what we can do with that. I think the next show is almost going to arrest and confront people with its creativity and handiwork and its craft. It’s going to be really hard to stomach for some people.’ This delights him. ‘The older I get, the more I think: push it, more, more, more. It’s very hard to revolt people in 2018.’

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