FW20
stefan cooke
British designer Stefan Cooke doesn’t let an idea go to waste. In creating the subversive garments his eponymous label has become known for, he imbues inspiration from the most mundane to the most exciting aspects of his life to turn second-hand pieces into lively works. He helms the London-based house with fellow Central Saint Martins graduate Jake Burt, together launching the brand after Cooke’s MA collection won an impressive series of awards that provided them the infrastructure to jumpstart the label. Since then, the duo has been transforming garments and textiles into men’s ready-to-wear with a distinctly English flair.
london
united kingdom
As Stefan Cooke continues to gain commercial and critical acclaim, the designers’ affinity for wardrobe staples that are at once eclectic and relatable shines through in the Fall/Winter 2020 menswear collection entitled “The End.” Though referencing the past, the process of reimagining vintage pieces has propelled the brand to a place where engaging with technology expands its capabilities. Case in point: The designers have invested in new tools like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip phone to help master their pattern-making by capturing in process garments at various angles and allowing for image referencing at the same time on the impressive Infinity Flex Display. The product’s functionality goes beyond designing, even being used by the label’s hair and makeup team, allowing for the stylist to see different vantage points while applying product with the selfie feature. In many ways, the use of the Galaxy Z Flip by Cooke is a perfect marriage considering his and Burt’s ability to reconfigure ages-old techniques into a new narrative in the same way Samsung has reinterpreted the flip phone for a new era.
Burt: Stefan won the L’Oreal Award for his MA collection when he graduated and Fashion East had approached him to start a brand. I graduated at the same time as him. We’ve been together for years now, so we decided to do it together.
Burt: A lot of our research is basically us going around England where there’s so many charity shops and antique stores. There’s just so many second-hand items and, if you keep your eyes open, there’s ideas everywhere — and you don’t have to spend a lot of money.
Cookie: It’s not necessarily researching specific things per se. It’s more about being open to everything and looking at everything constantly. With me and Jake, all of our conversations are about fashion and ideas. We’ll see something in a shop or online or in a book that sparks it — especially with textiles because you’re looking at fabrics and trying to think of how to make them original and your own.
Burt: Yeah. Often we’ll find an object or an old shirt and we won’t know right away why we like it so much, but we’ll work that out later. We just kind of have very open minds to things.
Burt: It’s about balance within a collection. It’s about analyzing the piece and thinking about how it’s going to be worn throughout the collection. We like techniques that take three weeks but we also do techniques that take 30 seconds. We’ve always said that it’s not about the technique because things can easily be way over-complicated, so it’s important that we decide what the product should say and what it should be about. If the answer is that it takes three weeks, then it takes three weeks — but it’s because it’s going to make it the best thing that it can be rather than spending loads of time on something for no reason.
fall/winter 20
collection
Burt: A lot of it is just us constantly having conversations, and luckily everyone that we work with is really quite local. We’re all able to meet up very regularly and have face-to-face conversations. I think it’s really important to see someone’s gut-reaction to something.
Cooke: We definitely send a lot of texts, emails, photos and things like that. When sending photos, you can literally have conversations with people that are just references. We do a lot of face-to-face like Jake said, but we’re always constantly digitally sharing through the [Galaxy Z Flip] as well.
Cooke: I really like the dual screen capability. You know when you think something might not be that useful and then you’re like, well actually this is really useful. The dual screen is really useful to keep one image up so you can constantly look at it and then you can still search and browse for other images on the other half of the screen. I was playing with the phone and waved at it and it took a picture, so that candidness is also amazing.
Burt: We’ve been together for a really long time. We met in our first years of BA university, so almost eight and a half years. We’ve developed a sort of telepathy when it comes to the way we talk about things. We also have experienced so many things together that when we talk about fashion or ideas, we don’t have to give the whole backstory — we have a massive shared history of research. It’s really rare that Stef will know an image and I won’t, or that I’ll know an image and he won’t. It’s to the point where once, we both saw an image that we both must’ve seen in childhood before we ever met, and I still knew what he was talking about because I must’ve randomly picked up that same issue of The Sunday Times in 2002. It was really weird. We also respect any differences that we have. Like everything Stefan’s good at, I find amazing. And anything I’m good at, I think Stef really respects, so we find it quite easy to be like, okay you care about this more because you know more about it.
Cooke: One of the funniest things I remember doing was a show, and my sisters were at the show, and they were like, “you know, that jumper was a jumper I remember our dad having when he was younger.” The fact that people associate things in that way and there’s such nostalgia in pieces — I find that nice. There’s so many connotations to things that are really fun to access. We always pick 1940s and 1950s handbags and we’ll put handles or chains on them. It’s just this idea of people having a memory of something already and then us re-issuing it to them that feels rightfully cyclical.
Head to Samsung’s website to learn more about the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip and how it’s changing the way designers like Stefan Cooke create a new ecosystem of interconnected fashion communities.
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While sourcing and reconstruction are at the heart of every design, visually capturing a collection's quintessence is equally important. Visiting Cooke and Burt on set at their studio, they gave HYPEBEAST a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into shooting the images for a collection, from fittings and styling to hair and makeup and creative direction. With the help of the versatile Galaxy Z Flip, Cooke brings the production together using features like the device's dual screen capabilities and video calls. Cooke and Burt sat down to share where they find inspiration, the role technology plays in their process and how they work together.