Eton debauchery provides inspiration for Styles’s go-to designer
Darling, where is Liverpool?”, asks Saltburn’s vacuous matriarch Lady Elspeth, portrayed by Rosamund Pike, in a scene from the Oscar-tipped movie where the blueblood Catton family speculate in horror at what life must be like oop north. She’d be suitably perplexed then, to see Liverpool’s finest fashion export taking the codes of her cut-glass accented nobility and setting them joyously alight. Imagine a double-barrelled Oxbridge fresher carousing through the cloisters with his top and tails skewiff, the night’s debauchery on his breath. Steven Stokey-daley, a British designer who founded his SS Daley label only in 2020, displayed a collection this week – against the Renaissance splendour of Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio as part of the city’s bi-annual Pitti Uomo showcase – that married the aristocratic codes of Saltburn and Britain’s finest educational institutions with his own irreverent sense of playfulness and ease.
“I haven’t actually seen Saltburn,” admitted Stokey-daley backstage of the movie that skewers the British upper classes and sets a wolf amongst them in the form of Barry Keoghan’s mercurial Oli. “I’m a bit of a Brideshead purist so I’ll stick to Evelyn Waugh for now.”
It was the work of another novelist, EM Forster, that acted as the catalyst for the collection, as well as a journal that Stokey-daley discovered charting the life of a young man at Oxbridge in 1935 who found himself in a romantic entanglement with a man from another dormitory.
British uprightness with a subversive twist then, carried neatly into the clothes and the idea of Etonian and Harrovian uniforms put through the designer’s creative washing machine, tumbling out in skewiff, playful forms.
Those carousing Henrys from EM Foster traipsed down the catwalk after the ball in razor-sharp coat tails, only worn with boxers or joggers. The idea of the dormitory after matron’s decreed lights out carried into the pillowy, padded coats with piping and series of striped pyjama sets, as well as the striped, easy-structure suits that called to mind rowing motifs.
“I’ve always been interested in the idea of the British class system and ways of dressing, of what a uniform means. I wanted to unpick that idea of formality,” said Stokey-daley of his take on traditional attire.
Tapestries, the likes of which line the hallowed hallways of the the stately homes of the British elite, were re-worked into hefty, shrugged-on ponchos and sweaters; “he’s a young guy who’s just taken one of the sofa or the wall and thrown it on to keep warm,” said Stokey-daley of his privileged young heir apparent.
It’s a position the 26-year year old designer finds himself in too, as one of the most feted young British fashion talents working today with an all-star following, in fact Sir Paul Smith made the journey to Florence to watch the show, a display of kindly support from one statesmen of British fashion to the new generation. Sir Ian Mckellan gave a dramatic reading during SS Daley’s last show and Harry Styles is one of the brand’s biggest fans. The designer used the show to announce that the musician’s just come on board as an investor and minority shareholder in his company. At a time when it’s a struggle for a young independent UK brand to thrive, you have to hand it to Styles for not just wearing Daley’s blousy, ballooning trousers and quirky knits but putting his weight behind someone who deserves international recognition as a young British talent.