Reese Cooper (Q9002)
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Reese Cooper is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Reese Cooper |
Reese Cooper is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
It would be so easy to lump Reese Cooper in with the other hype-dudes of the late 2010s who arrived in Paris looking to upend the menswear business. Funnily enough, as their youngest member—when he started his brand he was barely 20 years old—he may also be the most mature. His spring 2023 collection is overflowing with ideas, material developments, and pragmatic solutions. You might not expect it from such a classic American workwear look, but these clothes are smarter and more considered than their well-trod oversize proportions let on.Take the cargo jackets and trousers in various neutral shades. Cooper developed a modular pocket system so that pockets can be laced in and swapped around each piece in a variety of sizes, allowing each garment to go from streamlined to functional with a single knot. The bark of the trees that surround the park where Cooper held his show is etched into a fabric—one of his first custom fabrics—while the vines are machine stitched into varsity jackets and hand-embroidered into knits. Cooper’s girlfriend, the artist Juliet Johnstone, hand-painted botanical prints inspired by the foliage of the show venue on 50 scarves to accompany each look, while another friend dyed the blurry tie-dye fabric of green button-up shirts and bomber jackets.Cooper approaches his collection in a way that’s unlike Paris’s other guys. He wants his customers to be both comfortable and in total control of their style, able to adapt and adjust their garments to best suit themselves. He is not designing the look—he is just giving you the tools to make it your own. Partnerships with Thierry Lasry on sunglasses (six colorways including tomato red) and Levi’s on jeans and chore coats with the brand’s original 1800s labels play into that idea, subverting expectation and tradition. Next Cooper can tackle shape. He loves workwear and Americana, but his silhouettes don’t always match his sophisticated thoughts.
23 June 2022
Midway through a Zoom call with Reese Cooper the power in his new studio in Los Angeles goes out. In the frame, he’s frozen holding up a navy plaid anorak that folds into itself, the garment caught somewhere between sartorial tradition and the gorpy streetwear Cooper is known for. It’s a funny place for everything to go haywire because that garment, in many ways, symbolizes everything he’s trying to do with his fall 2022 collection: take a leap forward into more tailored, sophisticated, “adult” clothes without losing the rebellious, outdoorsy heart of his brand.His POV on fashion started to shift during the pandemic and after two outdoors shows in Los Angeles he was certain fall 2022 would be his return to Paris Fashion Week. Mais non! Even so, he began designing the collection with the polished traditions of Paris in mind. His plaids and houndstooth prints are hand-drawn in his studio with subtle incorporations of the brand’s deer logo hidden in the pleats of pants. Camouflage, a staple of his oeuvre, is so tonal, you might not even realize it’s camo.For the first time, Cooper is making tailoring—his way. A mossy cropped cargo jacket and wide leg pants with metal clip details are his version of a suit. He test drove it at the CFDA Awards last November, and is hoping his customers will experiment with “the widest leg pants we’ve ever made.”A 12-hour Instagram live feed has been conceived to convince Cooper’s friends and customers to step outside their comfort zone. In partnership with the platform and Shopify, Cooper streamed his entire lookbook shoot for the world to see. It’s a six-camera set up where “anything can go wrong,” he says with a laugh. Let’s just hope the power doesn’t go out on such a big leap forward.
6 February 2022
Reese Cooper christened his spring 2022 collection “Fresh Air.” You can interpret it plenty of ways—his return to a plein air runway, a partner to his fall 2022 show about forest fires—but maybe the simplest is that he’s found a new way of working and has made a fresh start. After shifting production to Los Angeles and hiring an in-house sample maker, Cooper was able to create faster and in a more exacting way than ever. His runway on the East Fork Bridge just outside of Azusa, California, was filled with new ideas and a reinvigorated sense of self expression.Let’s start with the obvious: The show closed with a sage organza dress made of layers of painted flowers. It’s unquestionably the most feminine and formal thing Cooper has ever made, but it’s still rooted in a celebration of nature: When the model walks, said the designer, it looks like flowers rustling in the breeze. The idea came up at dinner with Cooper’s friend and frequent collaborator Juliet Johnstone, who drew the flowers on the piece as well as the yellow floral motif that appeared on scarves and leather bags. The dress itself has a sort of haphazard spirit, definitely not the most refined crystal and organza you’ll come across this summer, but its explosive silhouette is reflective of its make. After a quiet year, a moment of frantic genesis feels like, well, a breath of fresh air.Other new ideas included an expanded womenswear offering, such as silk camisoles and graded down varsity jackets. A partnership with Levi’s birthed upcycled denim pieces—each order will be one-of-one, made by splicing and dicing Levi’s unsold product. Cooper also teamed up with Merrell, the outdoor shoe brand, on a series of footwear and even got the trail runner Gordy Ainsleigh to appear in the show. Overall, the collection had a freewheeling look, straps and scarves dangling off trousers, flags flapping in the breeze. An optimistic message: We’re going somewhere. Cooper has gotten off on the right foot.
25 June 2021
Reese Cooper christened his spring 2022 collection “Fresh Air.” You can interpret it plenty of ways—his return to a plein air runway, a partner to his fall 2022 show about forest fires—but maybe the simplest is that he’s found a new way of working and has made a fresh start. After shifting production to Los Angeles and hiring an in-house sample maker, Cooper was able to create faster and in a more exacting way than ever. His runway on the East Fork Bridge just outside of Azusa, California, was filled with new ideas and a reinvigorated sense of self expression.Let’s start with the obvious: The show closed with a sage organza dress made of layers of painted flowers. It’s unquestionably the most feminine and formal thing Cooper has ever made, but it’s still rooted in a celebration of nature: When the model walks, said the designer, it looks like flowers rustling in the breeze. The idea came up at dinner with Cooper’s friend and frequent collaborator Juliet Johnstone, who drew the flowers on the piece as well as the yellow floral motif that appeared on scarves and leather bags. The dress itself has a sort of haphazard spirit, definitely not the most refined crystal and organza you’ll come across this summer, but its explosive silhouette is reflective of its make. After a quiet year, a moment of frantic genesis feels like, well, a breath of fresh air.Other new ideas included an expanded womenswear offering, such as silk camisoles and graded down varsity jackets. A partnership with Levi’s birthed upcycled denim pieces—each order will be one-of-one, made by splicing and dicing Levi’s unsold product. Cooper also teamed up with Merrell, the outdoor shoe brand, on a series of footwear and even got the trail runner Gordy Ainsleigh to appear in the show. Overall, the collection had a freewheeling look, straps and scarves dangling off trousers, flags flapping in the breeze. An optimistic message: We’re going somewhere. Cooper has gotten off on the right foot.
25 June 2021
Reese Cooper is not mincing words for his fall 2021 collection. A bomber jacket reads: “The call of the wild should not be HELP!” Video calling from a new studio in Downtown Los Angeles, Cooper continued bluntly: “I’m in L.A., the center of the pandemic, in the worst place at worst time.” (Maybe not the worst time; just moments before our call, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.) But the severity of life in California right now, particularly in L.A., where recently one in five Covid tests were positive, is motivating Cooper to make change. On the pandemic front, he is the rare designer of the men’s fall 2021 season to include face coverings in his collection, and he spent what he estimates was 10% of his seasonal budget to ensure his staff, models, and collaborators could all be tested.He’s also turned his attention to the wildfires that ravaged California during the summer and early fall, having witnessed the devastation firsthand on road trips up and down the coast. To that end, Cooper partnered with the U.S. Forest Service to plan his fall 2021 collection. With their guidance, he chose to set his show against the Mount Wilson Observatory that was mere minutes from being destroyed by the Bobcat fire. A selection of products from fall 2021 will directly benefit the observatory and the National Forest Foundation, and Cooper will also continue his partnership with One Tree Planted that sees a tree planted for every garment sold. This sort of fashion activism can feel, at times, a little corpo-bleak, like the only way to save the environment is to keep buying into systems that, however noble, destroy it. But at least Cooper is trying to do good in the world; there are many, much more established names than his who churn on without regard.The gravitas of his subject this season also seems to have spurred the young designer to new creative heights. His clothing was always cool, the stuff people with Instagram bios that have airplane and location pin emojis in them would wear, but now, on the whole his collection seems smarter and more focused. Outerwear is a key theme for fall 2021, with cargo jackets, wool coats, and a luxe suede bomber hand painted by the artist Juliet Johnstone. Silhouettes are narrower and more considered—even as a twenty-something, Cooper admits he is done with sweatpants.
The ideas carry into a larger womenswear offering, with pleated skirts printed with images of helicopters dropping fire retardant over a burning California, as well as straight leg jeans and slim-cut flannels. Cooper is also offering his first shoe: A lace up hiking boot with a light Vibram sole for those who want to get out into nature and celebrate it while it lasts.
23 January 2021
The original plan for Reese Cooper’s spring 2021 show was to cover the floor in a Parisian school with vinyl to create a fake stream that his models could walk through barefoot. Ironically, the pandemic’s travel bans forced Cooper to seek out the real thing instead. He brought his closest friends and collaborators to a brook in Thousand Oaks, California, for a show and video shoot. The format is surprisingly similar to a fashion week event—models walk the watery runway, while others watch from the banks—but the effect is totally different. “Everyone there was so close to me; they all know my mom!” the designer said, laughing over Zoom from his busy studio in Los Angeles.Cooper’s work tends to be about his community, but this season the message feels its most genuine. It’s not just the casting, but the fact he has turned over the reins to artists like Juliet Johnstone, who painted bald eagles and flora on a long skirt, and to his shoppers. Early on in quarantine he sold a sewing pattern for his chore coat on his site—this was before Jonathan Anderson had the idea at JW Anderson and Loewe. Cooper borrowed back one of the creations his fans made and used it in this collection. Elsewhere he crafted prints from old nature magazines and scanned flowers he found on hikes around California, creating his own versions of camouflage, printed on canvas maxiskirts and leather bags.These personal injections add to the appeal of Cooper’s clothing. His silhouettes and shapes are largely drawn from existing outdoorsy wear—lots of pockets, hunter orange, duck pants—but the way he cobbles it together, skewing more Paris Fashion Week than L.L.Bean, is the story. Still, where he’s pushed himself most is developing his womenswear. A mesh and nylon cutaway skirt in his proprietary camo is a step away from the norm, opening the door to a new world of experimentation and potential.
13 July 2020
Reese Cooper was back in Paris this week, so soon after presenting his men’s collection as a mini show in January. As the first runner-up of the 2019 CFDA/VogueFashion Fund, he received showroom support for his womenswear, and noted how being here feels right for his longer-term vision. “I’m trying to figure out how to scale it,” he said of the collection, which he titled Wind Chill. “This is definitely the most that I have done with women’s so far, and so I look forward to being able to grow and expand on these styles.”And what were the styles, specifically? Well, Cooper’s hero piece was a puffer in thermoreactive fabric that will change its earthen color when exposed to the cold (like the inverse of the Hypercolor tees from the ’80s that lightened with heat). “I found the fabric six months ago and was just waiting for the right thing to use it for,” he said. A winter jacket would, indeed, seem like an obvious match. But the cropped and sloped silhouette is what signals his outdoorsy cool, and came forth elsewhere: on a blouson in herringbone wool with khaki paneling, ample cargo-ish pants with adjustable straps that taper the fit, and a camo motif he created from the bark of a tree from Arizona that caught his attention. As part of his sustainable approach, Cooper noted how several styles were garment-dyed (which occurs once the piece is made). This cuts down on the amount of fabric he is obliged to purchase and reduces eventual waste. An additional unexpected upside is that the pigments produce interesting natural tonalities that span the collection.Aware that girls have been buying his menswear since the beginning, Cooper has begun selecting various tops and knits and sizing them appropriately. But the boxy chain-link leaf-print bags that he initially designed for men required no alteration, and underscored his open-mindedness from the start. As an independent and growing designer, he might consider presenting the collections together as an efficient and universal expression of his American-in-Paris vision.
4 March 2020
For his hybrid runway show/presentation, titledIf A Tree Falls, Reese Cooper staged a forest clearing within a gallery of the Palais de Tokyo that appears uncannily realistic in these photos. Guests, meanwhile, were meant to experience the incongruity of the scene. “I was trying to show people what the brand looks like from my eyes,” he explained, by way of saying that there is always a wider world playing out beyond the frame of every photo.Cooper’s wider world is situated in Eagle Rock, CA, where he is far removed from fashion’s capitals. But having held a women’s presentation in New York last season followed by today’s event, he is gradually attracting the visibility that is necessary for any young designer (at 22 years old, Cooper is very young). And a collection as well-conceived as the one he sent out is what puts a designer on the map.His outdoorsy spin on streetwear translates into clothes that have grounded, everyday appeal. Here, he developed some distinctive proportions, such as the shorter jacket and lower rise pant of the opening look, and considered how to introduce more polish, which he did with a slim suit in a shade of bark. The selection of sweatshirts with woodsy illustrations and hockey scarves featuring RCI Trading Co. graphics that would have once comprised his core offering were now interspersed with casual blazers and fleece pieces that were finessed for city wardrobes. “I’m taking all the things I’m comfortable with and giving them a new context,” said Cooper, who was a CFDA/VogueFashion Fund runner-up last year. “I think it’s something I always wanted to do but finally felt ready.”With just four collections under his belt, Cooper wants his clothes to appear elevated—whether overalls with utility pockets, fishing-style vests or a standard flannel shirt. “How do we make [these pieces] so that I would want to wear them as I grow older; I don’t want people to feel like they are dressing like teenagers forever.” It was a telling statement that reflected both the designer’s stage in life and in his brand.
19 January 2020
When this year’s CFDA/VogueFashion Fund finalists were announced, plenty of industry insiders didn’t even know Reese Cooper’s name. They were likely even more skeptical when they heard he’s only 21. But Cooper is happy operating outside the confines of our so-called open-minded industry. He was just 18 when he launched his debut collection (his mom is still handling the finances!), but even then, he seemed to understand precisely where streetwear was headed: to the uppermost stratum of high fashion.Cooper’s twist is to give streetwear staples—bomber jackets, T-shirts, hoodies—a luxe yet vaguely collegiate twist, a clever reminder that he didn’t go college himself. For Spring 2020, he dreamed up a fictional high school called “Water’s Edge,” located in a small town surrounded by nature—maybe somewhere in California or the Pacific Northwest. Varsity jackets and T-shirts emblazoned with the “school crest” or printed with hand-drawn patches were mixed with more outdoorsy gear like field jackets, utility vests, and nylon parkas. The REI vibe has been trending for a few seasons now—all Cooper was missing was a pair of Tevas—but the drawstring prairie skirts lent a surprisingly feminine touch. (They were styled with sweatshirts, not camisoles, naturally.) Cooper is careful not to get carried away with “concept pieces,” though; he believes a key differentiator of his brand is that “there isn’t anything here I can’t make a thousand of.” He’s in the business of making product inspired by real, often anonymous people; earlier this year, he said he’s “inspired by things like classic workwear and people who wear clothing for function in daily life, not necessarily for fashion in the way we commonly think of it.”He staged his presentation in the corporate offices of Havas Agency, a branding and advertising company he’s worked with before. Guests walked past conference rooms filled with deliberating employees before making it to Cooper’s space, where he’d set up patches of astroturf and picnic tables to stage an after-school hang. His other 20-something and teenage friends were milling around, and you couldn’t help but read into the contrast of the slick, corporate setting and young, enthusiastic kids.
It said a lot about Cooper’s position in the industry: You get the feeling he’s not dying to stage a mega-show on the Fashion Week calendar, nor is he particularly concerned about social media value (his Instagram is an endless scroll of product shots, with zero selfies or vacation snaps). He’s been on an upward trajectory without much fanfare, and it seems fair to assume he’ll keep doing things on his own terms.
12 September 2019