The designers sourced that particular material from a homecraft website and mapped out the final product in 3D before scoring and gluing the individual sheets into form. The paper shoes, fedora, and chore jacket required the same process. “We’re obsessed with the middle space between luxury and naïve craft,” said Empringham. “It’s not about an embroidered dress. It’s as simple as the toys we played with as kids, and there’s something about that which feels quite British to us.” (See: the aluminum shirt assembled as if it were Meccano—England’s answer to Lego.) To translate the essence of these showpieces into real garments required a more practical fabrication. Organdy—an acid-stiffened cotton used to interline curtains—looked and felt like tissue paper when manipulated into crumpled dresses with hand-wrapped straps, mega-maxi skirts, and shirts with elaborated epaulettes. The medium is, for these two, the message, and this one, sheer enough to wear the fruits of its labors, was as honest as any DIY project.
Coomes and Empringham clearly know how to make desirable clothes—an especially great funnel-necked denim jacket included—but it’s going to take courage to sustain the brand when so many of their ilk are being suffocated by inflation, a fractured e-commerce landscape, and a worldwide slowdown in luxury spending. There’s much to be done to support independent businesses, particularly in London, but even in a more stable climate, designers still need to create something people—including those with mainstream tastes—want in order to survive. Still, theirs is a point of view so distinct that fashion might have no choice but to tune in; Aletta’s fascination with handcrafts feels particularly endearing—and strangely modern—at a time when the rise of artificial intelligence threatens to flatten the way art is produced and perceived. The world doesn’t necessarily need more clothes, after all, but it does need more ideas. (Plus, everything has pockets.)
