Reese Cooper (designer)

Reese Cooper
Born	November 1998 Jacksonville, Florida
Occupation	Fashion Designer
Website	https://reese-cooper.com/

Reese Cooper is a fashion designer born in Jacksonville, Florida. He launched his eponymous brand in 2016 without training or attending fashion school. In 2019 he was named as the youngest-ever finalist for the CFDA Vogue Fashion fund. He debuted his first full collection in 2018 at Paris Fashion Week. His brand is sold in the likes of Selfridges, Mr Porter, END Clothing and SSENSE. His work has been described as fusing "the preppy, poppy Americana of Polo Ralph Lauren with the [outdoorsy] functionality of Patagonia."

Early life and design inspirations

Reese Cooper was born in Jacksonville, Florida and raised in Atlanta, before moving to London at age 11.

Cooper's interest in creativity started from a young age. When speaking with Esquire he cited schooling and his family as impacting the way he viewed creativity: "I knew I wanted to make stuff. I didn't know it would be clothes, but in the regular education system you're not really taught that you can just go make stuff regardless of what it is. I always had a fascination with how things are made through spending a lot of time with my grandfather when I was younger. He made everything that they need at the house.”

The first brand Cooper "gravitated towards" in 2015 was A Bathing Ape, where he interned initially at the London store. Cooper describes living in London in his mid-teens seeing the brand for the first time and being drawn to an item's “super-bright, vibrant camo [print], and I just had no idea what it was. But I was super-attracted to it. I found out there was a store not 5 miles from me, so I ended up just hanging out there.” After interning at the London store, he moved to intern in the company's distribution office and marketing agency, separately titled "A Number of Names." The company also provided management and PR to brands such as Cav Empt, Billonare Boys Club, which taught him early on that there was "more to making clothes than just putting them in a store."

As for other inspirations and brands he admires, Cooper also cites Ralph Lauren as one of his favourite brands due to the expansive universe that the brand has created. He has said that "early Off-White" by the late Virgil Abloh was "incredibly inspiring" to him at a young age.

Reese Cooper Brand

Starting out and early collections

In 2016, when Cooper was eighteen, he released his first capsule collection. Titled "Spoiled Children," it consisted of a few T-shirts and jackets, a hoodie, a sweater and a pair of pants, and was inspired by the kids he grew up with. His next collection, "Seneca Arts Club" was also autobiographical. “The theme of that collection was basically that I didn’t go to school for this,” describes Cooper. “So I wanted something that represented the college of not going to college.” As his collections developed, themes of storytelling, "collegiate nostalgia, Americana and work-wear influences" found themselves repeating and becoming integral to the brand.

List of full collections

• AW18 Menswear "Lone Pine"
• SS19 Menswear "Fever Dream"
• Pre-fall 2019 Menswear "Against The Wind"
• AW19 Menswear "Hitchhiking"
• AW19 Womenswear "Big Sky"
• SS20 Menswear "How A Letter Travels"
• SS20 Womenswear "Water's Edge"
• AW20 Menswear "If A Tree Falls"
• AW20 Womenswear "Wind Chill"
• SS21 "River Runs Through"
• AW21 "PYROPHYTE"
• SS22 "Fresh Air"
• AW22 "Two Steps Forward"
• SS23 "Seed & Soil"
• AW23 "Desire Paths"

List of Capsule Collections

• "Spoiled Children"
• "Seneca Arts Club"
• "Water is More Precious Than Gold" - 2017
• Levi's X Reese Cooper - 2022
• Merrell X Reese Cooper - 2022 and 2023

Initiatives

Flint Child Health & Development Fund

In 2017, as part of his "Water is More Precious Than Gold" collection, Cooper released a line of "screen-printed T-shirts and hoodies that benefitted the Flint Child Health & Development Fund."

RCI DIY

RCI DIY was a project Cooper started during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using deadstock waste fabric from cancelled orders from various fabric mills, the project provided customers with an all-inclusive package of pre-cut fabrics that people could sew together at home to create a chore jacket. The project launched with just 20 units in stock, but after they sold out within 9 seconds of going live on his website, more were produced. In total over 1400 units were sold, "giving people the knowledge" to make their own clothes themselves through an "open-source process," showing people that making clothes is "not rocket science." Cooper described the project as a way to inspire and empower creatives to "pay forward" what he has learnt. From being inspired by the pathways that Off-White laid to him, RCI DIY sought to similarly provide insights to younger creatives and to teach them about the process of making clothes. For Cooper, Bringing young creatives closer to the production of clothing helps provide insight into the world of making clothes, and that not all designers have to follow the path of studying at Central Saint Martins, then going to "work at [a] fashion house for tens years" before "starting your own label."

The project has been compared to similar product lines, such as Swedish brand's Our Legacy's "WORK SHOP" line which started out making one-off items using leftover fabrics.

Create Now

Cooper's Spring/Summer 2021 collection "River Runs Through" included a T-shirt which raised funds for Create Now, an "organisation focused on generating art programs in underprivileged areas in L.A."

The National Forest Foundation

For Cooper's Autumn/Winter 2021 collection, as part of Paris Fashion Week online, his show was recorded at Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles, California. As part of the "Pyrophyte" collection, Cooper worked with the Mount Wilson Observatory and the National Forest Foundation "to create a few items to raise money to support the Observatory and Southern California’s National Forests," where 100% of the proceeds from these items went to the Mt. Wilson & NFF.

Notable wearers

Early in the brand's infancy one of Cooper's designs was worn by Idris Elba. It provided a teachable moment to Cooper, highlighting the importance of visible branding on certain items to allow products to gain traction.

In the music video for Hot (Young Thug song) remix, Travis Scott can be seen wearing a Reese Cooper Varsity jacket. The production team reportedly acquired three of the jacket for the music video for Scott and the shoot, most likely as back-ups for if the jacket was damaged, as a sleeve of the jacket is seen to be on fire during the music video.