Emma Cook (Q3030)
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Emma Cook is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Emma Cook |
Emma Cook is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
2000
entrepreneur
The paint is barely dry in Emma Cook's new Stoke Newington studio. She just moved her business out of Dalston, London's Williamsburg, because, she said, "It's always been really grotty, but now it's really crowded, too." Avoiding the crowds is something of a Cook strategy. Eight years ago she stopped showing at the already-prone-to-bloating London fashion week; aggressively pared down her hitherto embellishment-heavy collections; and used print as a vehicle for creating pulsating, irreverent designs at an accessible "contemporary" price point.This worked handily for a while. But, said Cook, it was again time to up sticks and shift emphasis. "My customers were getting bored of just print. And in truth, so was I." By moving the bulk of her manufacturing out of the U.K. to China, Cook has been able to reassert some of her suppressed 3-D substance while retaining (for almost every piece) a competitive price.Her new Fall collection balanced action-packed adornment against the simplicity of shapes like block dresses, Chanel-touched jackets, T-shirts, sweats, and drawstring pants and culottes. As for the embellishments, gold eyelets ran down the arms of bow-dappled blouses and glinted toughly on the front of bombers and sweats. Crochet work and beading had a pleasingly substantial accord on '60s-ish separates. Cook was never going to reject print entirely, and this season she opted for hand-drawn, William Morris-reminiscent plants inspired by a session leafing through 1970s children's books. Alongside the handwoven swan that moved magisterially up the side-seam of some of her pants, the prints appeared on semi-sheer blouses, more bombers, unbelted loose velvet kimono jackets, and much else besides. The paycheck pillagers will be those two yellow-, orange-, and pink-ribboned looks and a black fringe-lined jacket. But, hey, who can resist the occasional splurge? If Cook's mission is to change her menu often enough to keep her customers coming back for extra helpings, it's mission accomplished.
25 March 2015
"It's true, I can't resist a deer," said English designer Emma Cook while showing her latest collection. The designer's penchant for wildlife is well known: She often uses large-scale digitized photos of animals and ornithological images in a mutant, surreal, and unexpected way. For Spring, however, she dropped that signature for something fresher and different. "For prints, we wanted to give a more hand-painted feel rather than digital and go for something really feminine and romantic," she explained. "I didn't want to bore myself, so it was really time to move on and explore other themes and techniques."For the most part, animals gave way to tropical leaves and magnolias, with bold, verdant colors suggesting a jungle after the rain. The hand-painted floral theme contrasted with stripes, revealing a welcome new freshness and lightness. There was still a touch of wildlife, though it was a lot less literal than in the past: A "crocodile print" on pajama pieces didn't have the face of a croc, but instead was the pattern of a ripple that the animal leaves behind after swimming through water.Where Cook really progressed this season was with shape: Being so obsessed with prints in the past has meant that silhouettes often suffered, with too many oversize, shapeless dresses and caftans. That changed for Spring, and it was apparent from the first look—a clean broderie anglaise dress with a touch of mesh and fringe that had just the right amount of structure. This was followed by a bomber jacket with an eyelash fringe and a fitted blouse with an amusing flamenco-like detail on the sleeve. Sharply cut culottes, trousers, and knife pleats on a V-neck dress showed Cook's newfound interest in tailoring, although the pool slides gave the collection a casual, contemporary, sporty feel. All in all, it was a much more polished performance than in seasons past.
13 October 2014
London designer Emma Cook effectively relaunched her label in 2011, taking it off the runway and shifting to a contemporary price point. What's remained the same since then is Cook's graphic and rather surreal take on print, which was in eye-popping evidence this season. Her starting point was the traveling circus, which mainly served as an excuse to gather pattern inspiration from hither and yon—Moroccan tile, traditional American quilt, Egyptian scarabs, etc. A Persian rug print was rendered with trompe l'oeil fidelity. The results here were mixed: Cook has gotten very slack about her silhouettes, which may serve her commercially but does little to distinguish the collection as a whole. There were a few pieces that stood out, however—a trim black dress embroidered with gold scarabs, for instance, and a bomber patchworked together from various fabrics. And there is a palpable charm in Cook's sensibility. This didn't feel like her most focused effort, though.
12 March 2014
Each season Emma Cook writes another episode in her familiar story, bending it a little toward her notion of fashion, but without breaking the thread. Her materials are handcrafted leather and print, and she has a girl named Susie in mind who likes leggy clothes that stay just this side of cute.For fall, she put Susie in stiff leather coats and scallop-edged, A-line trapeze dresses with laser-cut, stained-glass Art Nouveau overlays, a motif repeated later on with gray jersey dresses. (Gray is big on the London palette this season.) Cook's marble-printed, long-sleeve shifts jibed with the trend toward covered-up day dresses. Meanwhile, her party frocks with shards of mirror embroidered onto champagne satin looked as if she might be steering Susie toward a West End cocktail for the first time. For a girl who works in the gritty East End, that's a step in a whole new direction.
16 February 2006
After a season's rest from the runway, Emma Cook has re-emerged with a collection that looks fresh, but also several degrees more grown-up and polished. Her delicate shell-pink draped jersey dress, cinched with a silver metal ivy-leaf belt, made a sweet, clean opener at a show staged in the Royal Academy of Arts. (Striving to win attention for young talent, London Fashion Week has chosen some new, very classy central locations, rather than leaving audiences to scrabble for novelty in the dingy back-street venues of the East End.)Cook, though, is not the newest of the new, and that's all to the better. This is her eighth season since leaving Central Saint Martins, and she's had time to develop a girlish, though not unbearably cute, personality with some original twists. That comes through in the way she might add a detail of a knotted hemline in a soft tulip skirt, or scatter a vaguely Art Nouveau print of foliage, moths, and birds on a white lawn pinafore.In a season when pretty dresses and femininity are so ubiquitous, Cook did well to avoid retro referencing and clichéd frilliness. She leavened her look with a few cropped sweats and wide-leg cuffed pants that hit an attractively practical note. There were a couple of odder notions (jersey jumpsuits with baggy bottoms, anyone?), but for the most part, this small collection hit a good note.
18 September 2004
Emma Cook, a young London designer, likes to do a lot of research for her seasonal theses; but as she progresses from a sophomore to a junior she’s learning not to lay her themes on too thick. She described her Spring 2004 presentation as inspired by “old-fashioned ideas about futurism, Rodchenko, the constructivists, and 1920’s statues of ladies.”What it meant was that Cook had worked machine-age cog motifs and photoprints of butterflies and flowers into flat cutouts that formed straps on dresses, neckpieces, and belts. Other details, like geometric, Deco-inspired leather inserts, also picked up on the Jazz-Age references that are currently preoccupying twenty-something designers the world over. Cook was aiming for a harder edge than usual, via slick black chintz coatdresses and some ultra-cropped boleros, but these served chiefly as garnish for the things she’s happiest doodling every season: little jersey dresses with a certain nonintellectual innocence about them.
21 September 2003
Emma Cook builds her collections around a time-traveling character named Susan, who, in her few seasons on the periphery of the London scene, has assumed the guise of everyone from Joan of Arc to Barbarella. It’s a cute way for her inventor to comment on current trends, and this time around "Starboard Susan" drifted naively to Earth as a sweet-toothed, girlie version of the space-age look. That meant jersey aviator helmets, cutout minidresses and jumpers with white tights, and clunky, low block-heeled patent pumps attached to ankle socks.Some of Susan’s dresses and A-line skirts were pieced together with leather and suede into a pattern of the planets. Others were in a black and white shell-and-starfish print done on jersey, a couple of which were cut with wings of fabric attached to her wrists by plastic bracelets. At still other moments she appeared ready for countdown in bibbed overalls and hooded jumpsuits. The starship trooper’s more charming escapades came when she switched from monochrome into pink or yellow and decorated her shifts with real shells and a necklace of mother-of-pearl. All the same, though Susan was one of the first to go ’60s-futuristic last season, her wardrobe this time had a limp quality and never really took off.
17 February 2003
Emma Cook’s Spring collection, her first official solo catwalk show, played like the ’60s as seen by a child of the ’80s. The 26-year-old designed her presentation around an imaginary woman named Suzistyrene, a character she dreamed up after watchingBarbarellaand doing some thinking about ’80s sportswear. Suzi, it turns out, has charm and individual style to spare.Cook worked ’60s themes—clear plastic inserts in shift dresses, shiny PVC and patchwork suede—alongside ’80s elements like jersey with shoulder cutouts, and straps and buckles reminiscent of Duran Duran. PVC raincoats with Liberty-style prints and suede overalls and dresses, meanwhile, had more than a whiff of Mary Quant and Jean Muir about them. Cook also referenced Paco Rabanne, via overdresses and neck pieces made of linked plastic circles and butterflies, but without getting heavy-handed or pretentious. All of which made for a lighthearted debut and a welcome breath of fresh air.
12 September 2002
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17 February 2002