Rebecca Cooper and Bridget Yorston
Bachelor of Design (Fashion & Textiles) (Honours), 2004
Fashion Designers and Founders of bec & bridge
UTS Alumni Award for Excellence 2014 - Faculty of Design, Architecture & Building
If Rebecca Cooper and Bridget Yorston didn’t believe in destiny before they met at UTS, they do now. When Cooper and Yorston sparked up a friendship on their first day as undergraduate students, it was the start of something beautiful.
Just two years into their Bachelor of Design (Fashion and Textiles) degree, from which they both graduated with first-class honours in 2004, friendship naturally evolved to business partnership and fashion label bec & bridge was born.
Sometimes we’re still taken aback by seeing such iconic figures wearing our clothes.
Producing a joint collection for their graduation show, the duo attracted the attention of the fashion industry and Australian Fashion Week invited the fledgling brand to participate in their New Generation show.
Since then, bec & bridge has gone from strength to strength. Picked up by David Jones in 2006 – their collections sitting alongside other celebrated Australian designers – expansion into the overseas market came a few short years later.
Now, the bec & bridge label boasts a cache of local and international celebrity followers, with Taylor Swift, Miranda Kerr, Nicole Ritchie, and Eva Longoria all seen sporting their designs.
“Sometimes we’re still taken aback by seeing such iconic figures wearing our clothes, and the incredible power of celebrity really does impact sales,” says Cooper.
In 2011, bec & bridge’s first solo show for Australian Fashion Week brought acclaim from some of the fashion world’s most respected editors and bloggers and each subsequent collection cements the brand’s place as a formidable force. Their collections strike a balance between aspiration and accessibility, and their sleek, contoured signature aesthetic is opening up lucrative markets.
“We’re getting a lot of traction in the United States,” explains Yorston, “so we’ll be focusing our attention on really leveraging that [traction] over the next few years.”
And with US department store giants Bloomingdales, Harvey Nicholls, Saks and Neiman Marcus already stocking the brand, the stage is set for big things for Cooper and Yorston.