Charles Jeffrey Loverboy is staging its Spring/Summer 2026 collection as a fusion of music, art, and fashion in partnership with Abbey Road, London’s most iconic and inspiring music studio.
The collection, ‘Prepared Piano’, is a tribute to the creative process and is shaped by music-making, specifically the experimental, analogue, and tactile kind long practised by Abbey Road. As Loverboy creative director Charles Jeffrey said: “In 2025, fashion for fashion’s sake feels vulgar.”
For the collection, Loverboy distilled archetypes from characters who emerged across the myriad photos and film within Abbey Road’s archives: authoritative execs in their crisp tailoring and wide-lapelled suits, the musicians’ display of function and flare, and the engineers in their white lab coats. In keeping with Abbey Road’s pioneering, future-facing commitment to innovation, these archetypes were reimagined for 2026.
It’s the music makers – those who came through cultural institutions like Abbey Road and subverted conventions in order to define modern music – for whom the collection takes its chief inspiration.
At the heart of the collection lie a pair of inverted questions: What does fashion sound like? How might sound be worn? These fuel the collaborative process behind SS26.
Charles Jeffrey first began sketching whilst listening to music recorded at Abbey Road. In collaboration with his design team, creative decisions were made like sonic remixes and layered, looped, or reversed. From this process came the season’s central visual motif: simulacra. Not quite copies, not quite originals – the pieces are echoes and imitations that distort classic tailoring. Shirts with extra sleeves that tie around the waist, trompé l’œil belts already stitched into trousers, shirts with ties pre-attached and askew, sunglasses gone wiggly as if melted by the sun. The result is a collection of mutated staples that demand a second look.
The collection’s name itself, Prepared Piano, nods to avant-garde composer John Cage’s 1940s technique of modifying the instrument with bolts, rubber, and cutlery, transforming it into something raw and unpredictable.
Loverboy applies this logic to its garment-making as formalwear is tampered with and lovingly warped away from its origins. Like a prepared piano, nothing quite sounds (or looks) the way tradition intended.
In lieu of a catwalk, Loverboy gathers artists, musicians, designers and creatives for a day at Abbey Road’s studio one. Friends of the brand, including Marni creative director Francesco Risso, stylists Genesis Webb and Marc Forne, musicians Planningtorock, Taahlia, Tom Rasmussen and Allie X, and viral Tik Tok commentator Lyas, join together to turn the space into a performative playground.
Inspired by the playful irreverence of 1960s conceptual art scenes such as Fluxus and artists such as Yoko Ono and Claus Oldenberg, each contributor stages their own mini-performance. These range from offbeat sonic rituals to diaristic monologues and impromptu solos.
The final output? Not just a collection, but an EP containing the day’s experimentations. This will be available to music producers across the world upon the release of the collection.
Charles Jeffrey says: “Abbey Road Studios is not just music icon; it’s a cultural hub, a laboratory of dreams. Loverboy has always aligned itself with institutions that celebrate culture, from the British Library to the V&A. Partnering with Abbey Road, a place that fosters innovation and creativity, felt like the perfect fit as I explore new dimensions in music and fashion. Our project ‘Prepared Piano’ embodies that spirit of experimentation, blending the sound of our creative process with the iconic legacy of Abbey Road.”
