Cos Collaborates With Artist Stephen Doherty

We love it when two beautiful worlds collide. Cos will forever be one of our favourite high street brands thanks to its minimal aesthetic, often-surprising but always sharp cuts and the fact that everything it makes looks way more expensive than it actually is – and how many things can that last be said of? Stephen Doherty, meanwhile, is an artist who, after a brief dalliance with study at Central Saint Martin’s, swapped his formal education for a practical one: working for ascending experimental knitwear star, Craig Lawrence.



From there, Doherty’s career began a creeping crescendo until, in 2019, it skyrocketed with his first solo show at Nick Knight’s London art gallery SHOWstudio, an exhibition entitled ‘Gratitude Blooms’ that took a long, lingering gaze at the wonder of flowers following a formative residency in Goa. Swiftly on the heels of that success, he scooped the NEW WAVE: Creatives award from the British Fashion Council, and took up a residency at the Sarabande Foundation, which was created in honour of Alexander McQueen.



For his collaboration with Cos, he has come back to the importance of flowers and the ‘strength in softness’ that they connote, the cyclic rhythm of nature battering them down only for them to rise once more, delicate and defiant.



He says, ‘There’s always a sense of ease with COS in the collections and the stores. With flowers, there’s a play with movement, so it was interesting to see that translate on the silhouettes and all the silk scarves. Considering summer, I wanted to carry through sunset, balmy colours with the cooler and fresher shades of black and blue. I like the impact one flower has on its own, so it was important that every print I created for this collection allowed each one the space to breathe.’

We’ll take the lot.

By Nancy Alsop
June 2023