You know you’re at a fashion event worth going to when there’s a girl with a bird on her head . Amongst the chequered floor tiles, and carefully skirting the table laden with cupcakes, a bevy of fashionistas wandered (we spotted Gloria Baulme, Fashion Director of Teen Vogue, Katie Shillingford and Karen Langley from Dazed and Confused, and Browns Focus Buyer Jemma Dyas) sipping spicy iced tea and surveying an intricate collection of knitwear laid out on ten dressmaker’s dummies.
Putting to use again their long-standing affair with Bauhaus and architecture, Cooperative Designs showcased a graphic, geometric pod of clothing, accented with exposed brass zips and hinged, Perspex statement jewellery. Skirts rose vertiginously from back to front, block-colours shouted from cropped, draped tops and the cutest knitted shorts rose past belly buttons to meet teeny crocheted crop tops. There were knots in hems, stripes set askew and translucent layers to set it all off.
Underpinning the entire collection was a sense of the process and the raw, unpolished-ness of it all. The perfect antidote to slippery, fast fashion, Cooperative Designs have real personality – a big one at that, and one we’d quite like to be friends with. Emma Hopkinson
Images: Eddie Blagbrough
Images: Eddie Blagbrough
