The very English charm of SS Daley, the eponymous brand of the young Liverpudlian designer Steven Stokey Daley, has a widening depth to it. For one thing, there was his inspiring representation of models of diverse sizes (making him the first to do for menswear what the influx of gorgeous curve models has been doing for London’s women’s shows). And then: all kinds of wearable new treats were scattered through the collection in the form of ticking-stripes and balloon-sleeve blouses with botanical prints, sweaters with Wedgwood plate blue-and white embroidery, zip-up cardigans with a pair of rabbits on the front. There was a lot of bunny action, actually—for why, later.
Daley’s third show, again using actors from the National Youth Theatre, was based this time around a dramatized reading of the love letters between Vita Sackville West and Violet Trefusis. They played it on a set evoking Sackville West’s famed white garden at Sissinghurst.
But first, the show had memorably opened with a tolling bell and something which felt, skin-creepingly, like a black-clad funeral procession, with a priest-like figure in a long black coat at its center. That succeeded as an introduction to—or rather a reiteration of—all the pieces (his voluminous pleated Oxford bags, corduroy suits, voluminous cotton shirts and knitted vests) that made SS Daley a big hit with fans during lockdown, subsequently helping him to carry off this year’s LVMH Prize.
But why the funereal beginning? Backstage, Daley explained that he had come across a sketch from one of Violet’s letters. “It was about a time in the south of France together, when Violet dressed like a man, in a full length morning coat, and they could pass as a couple. A time when they could enjoy love freely.” The women also coined a codeword for writing about their love—it was ‘rabbit.’ The clandestine relationship became increasingly sad, though. “They were trapped, society dragged them apart, and they couldn’t be together.”
Daley’s interest, right from college, has always been about looking at the behaviors and dress codes of the British upper classes, chiefly of the 1920 and ’30s, from the point of view of a working class designer. “In my first collections, I was looking through a homosocial gaze at public boys schools. With this, I was doing the same, but with a relationship between two women. It’s quite nice to explore that from a different viewpoint.”
But of course, her late Majesty also had something to do with the mournful tone of the tableau set out in Daley’s introduction. “It’s been a really interesting week. My work references the upper classes and aristocracy, and so I grapple with my personal standpoint on the monarchy, as regards to class.” But then he called his own grandmother. “I was the first to tell her the Queen had died, and she burst into tears on the phone.” The designer wiped his eyes. “And I don’t know why, I felt really emotional about that.”
