Stirling Cooper
| fashion chain | |
| Founded | 1967 |
| Headquarters | London, UK |
|
Key people
|
Ronnie Stirling, Jeff Cooper, (founders), Jane Whiteside (co-founder and designer), Antony Price, Sheilagh Brown (designers) |
Stirling Cooper was a London-based fashion wholesaler and retailer that, along with brands such as Biba, Quorum, Browns and Clobber, helped to redefine UK fashion in the late 1960s.
Part of the Swinging London scene in the early years, and with a destination store on Wigmore Street that attracted rock stars such as Mick Jagger, it grew into a substantial wholesaler and retailer and was even more influential in the 1970s, when UK-wide concessions created accessible and affordable high fashion.
Stirling Cooper was started by two London cab drivers Ronnie Stirling and Jeff Cooper in 1967. It was initially a small-scale operation and sales techniques included using a London double-decker bus as a mobile showroom. In September 1967, Stirling and Cooper were introduced to a Royal College of Art fashion graduate Jane Whiteside; the introduction came through Diane Wadey, a buyer for the Oxford Street department store Peter Robinson, who had met Whiteside during a pre-graduation project. It was Whiteside who provided the initial fashion direction for the Stirling Cooper brand.
Initially, the company operated as a wholesale operation only and focused on womenswear. By March 1968, Whiteside's first designs for Stirling Cooper were featured in a spread in The Times, even though at this stage the designs were only available at Peter Robinson's London and Sheffield stores, a booth at Kensington Market called Make Believe Dreams and another booth at Bond Street market. Influential Times fashion editor Prudence Glynn introduced Whiteside as a new talent in the London fashion scene.
In October 1969, Glynn recommended a visit to the new Stirling Cooper boutique in Wigmore Street, describing its strange decor in graphic detail: "Ingress, or rather descent, is through the jaws of a dragon and you expect to find yourself in a salon with a digestive tract decor. In fact, once you have been swallowed by Geoffrey Vivas' smiling monster the style is Japanese bath house." After warning Times readers about the skimpy and body-revealing doors of the women's changing rooms, Glynn added that this store was the best way to see Whiteside's whole collection in context. She described dresses trousers and shirts embellished with men's silver trouser buttons, adding: "free from the qualms of any store buyer she does ankle-length bonded jersey skirts, long waistcoats, tie-around spiv jackets and saggy mid-length jersey coats. A whole personal statement in clothes at such modest prices that the message reaches a mass audience."
...
Wikipedia