Even by London standards, it might actually be a first that journalists turn up for a presentation only to be told that the designer’s clothes are “stuck in traffic.” Oh, well, no matter: The hard-core of Stefan Cooke fans were happy enough to stand around and chat outside the Tenderbooks art bookshop on Cecil Court, where Cooke’s off-schedule thing was meant to be happening. In the shop window were cardboard cutouts of some of his spring looks, arranged around the inspiration of the collection: New York photographer Amy Arbus’s On the Street 1980-1990, whose cover famously captures the young Madonna wearing a dirty old man’s overcoat, ballet shoes, ankle socks, and a scrappy cotton neckerchief and carrying a 1950s bowling bag.
Luckily, printed Stefan Cooke look books were being given out to fill the time before the clothes appeared—and, fortunately, Vogue Runway already had a preview with Cooke and his partner, Jake Burt, and a long conversation about the way of the fashion world a couple of days ago. Recently, the pair has spent a lot of holidays in America, rooting around in vintage stores, hence their adulation of the sort of New Wave self-styling that Arbus captured on the street in the early ’80s.
“One of the things we came across and fell in love with was the brand Parachute, which opened huge warehouse-size stores—and quite quickly, within the stores, little scenes would emerge,” said Burt. “It was in the era of New Wave in New York, and I felt like that was a bit of a guiding light when it comes to how retail spaces can create culture.” A centerpiece of their collection was a replica of an American flying jacket they found on one of their trips to secondhand and army-surplus stores—also key resources in the early ’80s for cash-poor, style-rich club kids.
Flying suit trousers inspired the narrow-zip front leggings look for women—paired brilliantly with big-shouldered, nipped-in knitted dresses, flaring into mini rah-rah skirts. “We found a whole basement of brilliant ’80s American football uniforms in a vintage store in the West Bronx, which the owner was selling for about $5,” said Burt. Inspiration for them may start with vintage research, but the genius of Stefan Cooke is the way they transform their ideas into their vocabulary and will stick to it.
Aficionados will recognize the sweater-skirt silhouette as something Cooke invented when he placed a pleated mini kilt on the hem of a checked Harrington jacket in fall 2021. By that time, he’d already come up with the negative-space argyle-pattern sweater design that this season migrated onto cutout leather handbag designs. There was also a maddeningly clever new version of the button-chain-mail technique the brand came up with as handbag “guitar straps” years ago. In this look book, you’ll find it as a V-shaped necklace, exactly mimicking the stripes on the neck of a cricket sweater.
“I think it’s nice just to keep on referencing your own work,” Cooke said, modestly. True—tweaked continuity and playing with codes and signatures is a textbook way to build a brand. With these two, that kind of smart creativity is an instinctive gift. In the look book, it produced a kind of British take on preppiness, which is very much in the swing of things—Princess Diana big hip-length sweater and knife-pleated skirts and all.
Cooke and Burt have skipped showing a couple of seasons, and their slight Fashion Week guerrilla non-happening yesterday might give the impression that they’re just doing this to stir up a bit of mischief and fun. Not at all: The clothes here were sold to their retailers ahead of time in June, and these two are adamant that they want to make clothes that are real and worn. “We’ve just done an install this week at Dover Street Market, because they asked us to, because the sell-through of last season has gone well,” said Cooke. “I feel like we’re really finding that with our own online shop that it’s lot of customers from the US, Korea, and Japan too.” This is a delight to see. Fashion Week fiasco forgiven.
