Rather than concocting an elaborately costumed drama, pulling from bygone centuries and rich historical archives, this season the Stefan Cooke boys went back to the basics. In their first ever co-ed runway, the pair borrowed from overlooked elements of the everyday, and incorporated them into a suave design lexicon. 

The duo experimented with ribbon, unwound into a bodice-hugging harness whose leftovers are then flattened into Trompe l’oeil prints that grow around long-sleeve shirts and skin-tight leggings. From the bottom of your wardrobe, they pluck a trio of slogan tees, one a relic from a student foam party at Club Ice, another dolled them up with large, opaque sequins that hint at bokeh abstraction. These were followed by bolshy heritage scarves, tied not at the neck but from the shoulder, and varsity jackets in washes of ice-light denim or smooth, dark leather. 

They brought with them layers of embroidered chain detailing that sloped down from boat necks, carrying through this illusionary spirit to seam-plagued corset jackets and their matching midi-skirt sets – edges frayed, and drenched in luminescent shades of yellow, dusty pink and glowing, radioactive green. Cooke’s signature slit patterns were nodded at less explicitly in subtle pale patterns and shiny footwear. While twee knit dresses and their subtle flared hemlines waved goodbye to the label’s preppy FW21 predecessors to map out their own minimalistic identities, introducing shiny, slim zips and a scant layer of waist-cinching belts. Elevating the ordinary is by no means an easy feat, but with a bit of tact, and a twinkly Carly Rae Jepsen remix, Stefan Cooke showed just how beautifully it can be done.