Cos: A dance to the sound of textiles at Pitti

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jun 13, 2018

It was as much about the sound as the silhouette at a refined and modernist show by Cos on Wednesday morning in Florence, where the entire collection was worn by the Wayne McGregor company of dancers.

 
Cos, the minimalist label aimed at creative professionals that is owned by H&M, was making its debut at Pitti 94, the latest edition of the world’s most sleekly organized menswear fashion week.
 
“We wanted to work on the idea of movement, and the best person to highlight that is a choreographer, so Wayne came to mind,” explained Cos’ menswear designer Christophe Copin, mentioning Tree of Codes, “the incredible” 2016 meeting of McGregor’s company and the Paris Opera Ballet in the Palais Garnier.

For Pitti, Cos presented inside the rarefied Renaissance cloisters of the Istituto degli Innocenti. Yet the dancers looked anything but innocent as they leapt and contorted around to a marvelously spiritual and soaring electronic custom soundtrack by Joel Cadbury, the composer famed for the cult gangster film Sexy Beast.  The troupe attired in the spare yet chic Cos x Pitti Uomo collection.
 
Cut elongated and voluminous without ever being eccentric; finished with displaced buttons and exaggerated lengths and made in mono-colors of gray, navy blue, fine white and putty gray, the whole collection was a fine statement about the core elements of Cos DNA - modernity, tactility, timelessness and functionality.

 
“Some knitwear pieces have wrinkles, as they keep the memory of the movement. We wanted some shirts and coats to be crisp and to have a sound when they moved. Which is the starting point of the music, as I got Joel to wear the clothes and hear their sounds,” laughed Copin, a Frenchman who works out of Cos’ studios in London. On a day when a war of words has broken out between France and Italy over immigration policies, it felt good to see a Frenchman get a warm reception in Tuscany.
 
Clearly the carefully offbeat mood of Copin’s clothes for Cos have found a quiet yet cool following internationally.
 
Cos plans to open a further 10 boutiques before for the end of the year, from the current chain of 248 stores worldwide. These include Basel, Switzerland and Changsha, China which both open this Friday. Also planned for 2018, openings in Hotel Dieu in Lyon, France; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Austin Texas and Los Angeles in the USA; Augsburg, Germany; Lyngby, Denmark; Brisbane, Australia and Bangkok, Thailand.