Average Boys Club Is Building A Queer Lifestyle Brand

You’re invited on a trip to the farm for Jordan Sloan and Chris Ashley Cairns’ latest offering.

“We know that authentic connection to a niche audience, built by embedding oneself in the culture, is the only ingredient that yields real long-term success,” Jordan Sloan and Chris Ashley Cairns tell Man About Town. The pair are founders of Average Boys Club: the queer London lifestyle brand known chiefly for selling jock-coded sportswear harking back to the visual language of ’80s homoeroticism since its creation two years ago.

Both boasting backgrounds in the fashion industry – Sloan in fashion leadership and Cairns in buying – they’re well-placed to get an apparel brand off the ground. However, what they’ve set out to achieve since the project’s inception is something more, driven by a mission to architect a lifestyle offering that not only draws on queer culture but generates it, occupying a tangible presence in the community beyond simply the feel of the fabrics on its customers’ backs.

Each of their three capsule collections to date has been accompanied by a sweat-inducing zine, rooted in the brand’s affinity for the adult imagery of yesteryear. The latest, accompanying capsule three and freshly released campaign Farm Boys, is crafted by creative director and collagist Patrick Waugh (Dior, Miu Miu, Versace). Available to order online, alongside the collection at a physical pop-up termed “The Study” in London’s BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Gallery Café (running between 9 and 14 June); and via a takeover of Soho magazine seller The Week, it serves partly as a lookbook but also a collectable piece in itself. And from the study, to the newsagent and the club – they’ve also taken the Average Boys universe to their city’s kinetic queer nightlife scene, teaming up with London clubland legend Jodie Harsh, for a takeover of her weekly party, Feel It! – incidentally, where Sloan and Cairns originally met.

Marry it altogether, and Average Boys Club emerges as a fashion presence simply expressing the rituals and interests of its architects. “It’s our lifestyle and a genuine passion,” Sloan and Cairns explain, “to build a brand that becomes a platform that benefits our community by championing our creativity, our history, and our values.”

Below, they guide Man About Town through the release of their third capsule, recontextualising wardrobe staples and the way the brand champions queer creativity.

Hi Chris & Jordan! You’ve said previously that Average Boys Club came from you noticing a gap in the market. Can you tell us more about how you defined that gap in the early days? Was there a lightbulb moment where you realised it was something you felt you could contribute to?

From day one, it was about consumer, product, and price point. No one was making real lifestyle clothing for gay men; designed with consideration, built to be taken seriously, and priced for accessibility. We wanted to make a culture brand for and by the queer community. One that earns its place in Dover Street Market or Selfridges but doesn’t price out the people it’s made for.

In our first brand deck, we had our positioning statement written down succinctly as: The Gay Sporty & Rich. We have evolved since then, however, the notion is still relevant. We were also obsessed, from the very beginning, with a singular hero product. An archetypal product, iconic in the gay scene, difficult to find done well, easily understandable, easily recognisable, and something that makes everyone feel witty and sexy. The perfect cropped graphic tee and tank. We made our own pattern with our friend, Asad Khan, who designed at Central Saint Martins. This is what the brand is built from, and that focus has never gone away.

When you’re introducing someone to the Average Boys Club universe — what do you tell them?

At its simplest, Average Boys is a gay lifestyle brand, taking wardrobe staples and recontextualising them for a contemporary consumer with humour, wit, and design sensibility. Rooted in queer identity, drawing on past eras to shape culture. But the universe is more than that; a feeling, a connection, a purpose. A platform to champion gay and queer creativity.

As well as sold-out capsules, the brand accompanies each collection with zines and has partnered with queer club night Feel It. Can you tell us more about your approach to connecting with the community beyond the garments themselves? How do you achieve that authentically?

We created this brand because we are deeply embedded in the fabric of the community we’re making it for. It’s built by and for the gay community, while not excluding others, of course. We’ve both thrived because of our gay community. Jordan came out at 18; that’s 17 years of living, working, travelling, and partying in most of the gay capitals of the world. Chris also came out at 18, with similar experiences, developing his roots in London, except he’s younger and chronically online. We actually first met each other at Feel It, so that was a full circle moment.

We feel genuinely connected to the people and have learned the behavioural nuances, lifestyles and preferences of our community. We see homogeneous patterns that we love, from how we dress to the entertainment we love, to our references and who we follow, and of course, our nightlife choices. This is what makes our community distinctive, uniquely intertwined, and special.

We have both spent our entire careers working in fashion, in strategic and creative roles in product, merchandising, and marketing. We have observed the cycles of fashion and now the demise of luxury.

We see all brand touchpoints as cultural touchpoints, from the creative people that help bring the vision to life, to the brands, businesses, and creative partnerships we engage in. Brands are curated universes, and the touch points are how they express themselves, so we are constantly connecting the dots between art, fashion, architecture, design, music, and nightlife – seeking mutually beneficial partnerships that feel bold, exciting, unexpected, and culturally leading that speak to both our taste and the taste of our audience.

For the campaign Farm Boys, you drew inspiration from ’80s erotica. What were the visuals you were looking back on, and why were you drawn to them to communicate the collection?

Initially, the inspiration came from the book Three by Howard Roffman; however, we are always inspired by 80’s erotica magazines, videos and photography mainly. We also look at archived imagery from gay gatherings and documentaries that cover the ’70s to early ’90s, which for the gay community was both an incredibly beautiful and tragic period of time.

The entire brand draws inspiration from past eras. Perhaps it’s the nostalgia, but we believe there’s a timelessness to the codes and aesthetics from the past that still feel relevant, effortless, chic, and sexy. And despite the camp, “tacky” characteristics of vintage porn poses, the imagery somehow feels artful, tasteful, and aspirational, which is almost ironic, and exactly why it works.

The task is always to play with the codes and treatments, confidently adopt the clichés, but elevate and modernise them by collaborating with incredibly creative talent, photographers, videographers, stylists, and other creative professionals who have supported us throughout the whole journey.

What do you want people to feel when they wear an Average Boys Club piece?

Sexy, smart, and a little bit stupid.