Cooperative Designs' Cozy Chic

After meeting during their MA at Central St Martin's in 2007, Londoners Annalisa Dunn and Dorothee Hagemann fused their individual aesthetics and love of all things "craft" to form Cooperative Designs, a knitwear line with an avant-garde approach.

Their debut collection as Team Cooperative Designs was a multicolored stripe-fest, featuring handmade oversized knits, jersey dresses, harem jumpsuits and snood-inspired headpieces in a range of bold hues that would have the less adventurous among us quaking in their monochrome. No worries though, a parallel collection entitled "Shadows" featured almost identical pieces in a more sober palette of black and white.

For autumn/winter '08-'09, the ladies were influenced by surrealist horror films like Jan Švankmajer's Faust and Dario Argento's Suspiria as well as tribal iconography. Rainbow stripes make a return alongside playful Aztec-inspired imagery, proportions lean towards the long and slouchy, and layering is encouraged with print leggings, long mittens, comfy scarves and pajama-like onesies.

The duo's starting point may have been "a hand-knitted vintage cardigan featuring folk scenes," but the end result looks like something Björk would wear on a video shoot in Tenochtitlan. And for the less outlandish among us, there is once again a Shadow collection. Now you can be cozy and cutting-edge all at the same time.

—Lena Dystant