LFW SS11 Diary: Cooperative Designs

Held within the Soho Rooms of Groucho private social club, the chabby-chic yet opulent venue was the perfect setting for the Cooperative Designs presentation yesterday afternoon. Packed to the rafter’s guests sipped champagne and tasted mini baked delights whilst viewing the Bollywood Babylon collection.

Designed by duo Annalisa Dunn and Dorothee Hagemann, the presentation comprised of six models of differing ages wearing items from the SS11 collection in a perfectly styled frieze, chatting happily and posing whilst one expertly played the piano barefoot. A vision straight from the 1920’s, the atmosphere and set designed by David White was reminiscent of the era’s speakeasy’s and triggered visions of silent movies and the era’s emerging celebrities; The Bright Young Things*.

Inspired by an imaginary film set in a fantasy colonial bar in India in the 1920’s, the faux Art Deco setting perfectly complimented the secondary inspiration - imagery from Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon – depicting the scandals, glamour and debauchery of the 1920’s film industry.

A fantastic presentation, perfectly executed with such acute attention to detail - from the Marcel wave hair to the heavily made up eyes and lips – that makes me want to run out and dress like the Cooperative Designs take on a modern day flapper.

* Bright Young People was penned as a nickname by the tabloid press, for a group of young aristocrats, bohemians and socialites who emerged into the public domain during 1920’s London. Immortalised in Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 novel, Vile Bodies, the Bright Young People threw elaborate parties and inspired a generation of writers, including Waugh’s protagonist Adam Fenwick-Symes who wrote an exposé novel about his contemporaries entitled Bright Young Things. Over eighty years later the term has stuck in the public’s stream of consciousness and is frequently adopted to describe emerging talents within the arts. Check out me, the geek!