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.
