Continuing to create, even in lockdown, Jake Burt and Stefan Cooke have captured their Spring/Summer 2020 collection in an innovative way
- TextJack Moss
It goes without saying that the coronavirus pandemic has entirely changed the way that the fashion industry operates – a recent survey of the Business of Fashion community found that 84 per cent of workers are now doing so from home. For designers, particularly those at young, emerging labels without the infrastructure of more established brands, this of course presents a multitude of challenges – not least the conundrum of how, and if, you can continue to create a collection outside of your studio. What has become clear, though, is that those who wish to survive will be those with the will to innovate; to adapt quickly to what is fast becoming fashion’s new reality.
Last month, near the beginning of lockdown, Jake Burt and Stefan Cooke – the designers behind Stefan Cooke, the label – spoke to AnOther about how they hoped lockdown, which they are spending at Burt’s parents’ house in Somerset, would be a chance to spark a new feeling of creativity within the British fashion industry. “Hopefully next season there will be less pressure to put on a traditional catwalk show as attendance may be limited,” they said. “It would be nice to see everyone rethinking how they present their work, trying different types of projects and partnerships and ultimately being as creative as possible.”
In the weeks since, their Spring/Summer 2020 collection, first shown last year, has begun to arrive in stores – including Browns Fashion, for the first time this season – which has left them thinking about how they might support the launch. The answer is a beautiful, lo-fi series of images, created using an old scanner, where garments are cut and pasted into the grounds of the old schoolhouse in which Burt’s parents live. “This scanning technique came from looking at the resources we had around us and trying to create imagery to support the new collection as given the current global situation and social distancing, we couldn’t shoot anything as normal,” the pair tell Another Man.
The label has become known for a laborious use of craft which is often only revealed when garments are viewed up close. “It takes a really long time to scan the clothes from our S/S20 collection but the process is an effective way of capturing anything with a lot of tiny details and you feel really close to the item that has been scanned,” they say. As for what’s next: “We’ve used this technique on a larger scale before including beds with people lying in them and we’d like to go even further and scan parts of the beautiful National Trust schoolhouse we’ve relocated our studio to that Jake’s parents currently live in.”
Stefan Cooke’s Spring/Summer 2020 collection is now available at Browns Fashion.
