Freddy Coomes and Matt Empringham have the flush-cheeked appearance of an Enid Blyton illustration and share a similarly boyish enthusiasm for inventing and making. That much was obvious from their graduate collection, which included outsized coats sliced from what looked like rolls of gift wrap, trick-of-the-eye knits cut from a faux suede found in the manufacturing of car seats, and two-dimensional scarves caught in a permanent gust of wind. Coomes and Empringham’s work at Central Saint Martins built on the bizarro double-takes of designers like Jonathan Anderson, with whom they worked at Loewe and JW Anderson, respectively. “But it was totally unwearable,” said Empringham during a preview of their first Aletta collection at the Sarabande. “The past six months have been about channeling that spirit into commercial looks that aren’t made from, like, polystyrene.”
Following a string of boldface placements on Emma Corrin, Sienna Miller, and Emilia Clarke, the duo launched Aletta—named after Coomes’s mother—with a capsule of silk rugby dresses at Dover Street Market. “Discovering ‘the woman’ has been empowering,” Empringham, who is careful to avoid the trap of male-telling-female-how-to-dress, added. “But to do that we needed to distance ourselves from celebrities so that we could establish the brand on our own terms and think about the people who might naturally gravitate towards our clothes on the street.” Coomes continued: “That was never going to be a famous person. It needs to feel more grounded, and it took us withdrawing to figure that out.” This period of soul-searching culminated in a brilliant debut featuring no more than 14 looks—an edit as precise as the geometric folds on a shirt cut from a cotton so densely woven it felt like card.
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.)