A Day In The Life – Cozette McCreery

If being photographed alongside Jane Birkin and having a poster of yourself in the window of a trendy Chelsea photographer’s gallery counts, London-born Cozette has been hanging out with the fashion pack since she was 18 months’ old. Fast forward to 2011 and she is one third of hot men’s knitwear collective SIBLING. She also DJs, co-runs East London’s A Fashionable Pub Quiz and is the ‘face’ of Richard Mortimer’s BoomBox and Ponystep nights. This coming London Fashion Week, Cozette and her SIBLING cohorts, Sid Bryan and Joe Bates, are launching the womenswear line SISTER by SIBLING as part of the New Generation (NEWGEN) emerging talent platform.

G Mag followed her around for a day to see just how she packs it all in…

08:00 A RUN IN THE PARK, HACKNEY
At 07.45am on the dot, the child next door wakes me up. I get the feeling she doesn’t like school at the moment. She’s a little ‘No’ alarm, bless her.

I’ve just started running and can manage 20 minutes without dying. Well, actually 17 minutes. I try to run every other day, as it really clears my head. Sometimes the thought of it makes me want to sit on the sofa and eat chocolate, but once I’m back, I know why I’ve gone. I just need to get out of the habit of picking up a massive soya latte as a post-workout ‘reward’ on the way to the studio, as this probably defeats the object.

10:00 BREAKFAST MEETING AT LEON, SPITALFIELDS.
I slurp a homemade lemonade as I wait for my PR pal Narmin Mohammadi to turn up for a fashion pow-wow. Having worked over the years with many a fashion designer – from Jasper Conran and John Galliano to Bella Freud and jeweller Solange Azagury-Partridge – I often arrange to meet my West London fashion friends here, as it’s near Liverpool Street station. Typically, I’ll spend an hour here, but sometimes it’s much longer – especially if world domination or surf plans are on the agenda.

11:14 AT THE SIBLING STUDIO
I go through samples with Sid Bryan, the knitting genius who designs the menswear label. We’re putting together the final samples for the Paris menswear shows. I’ll be taking the new collection to Paris tomorrow, so ‘hectic’ is an understatement. I love the vermilion Gypsy 3 cardigan that’s for SIBLING S/S12. It’s 100% cotton with hand-embroidered lettering by Laura Lees, the stitch genius who’ll be working on show pieces for us to debut at London Fashion Week.

The SIBLING approach to knitwear is unique; so too is our approach to SISTER, the new womenswear label we’re launching this September.

Every season, we work with an artist. For S/S12, we’ve been working with Japanese illustrator/animator/wonderkid Yuko Kondo. Because his work’s so detailed, we’ve printed his designs onto knitted bases. One of my favourites is a Funfair print sweater dress. We have two themes for the collection: Funfair and Tattoo.

It’s so exciting to be working with someone from Japan. The first store to stock our SIBLING label was the Tokyo boutique BEAMS; the Japanese love our humour and use of colour.

14:32 SEWING IN LABELS
Oh, the glamour! I’m probably sewing this label in badly, but I’m only doing it because pre the Paris collections, we’re flat-out and there’s no one else free. Every piece in SIBLING and SISTER by SIBLING is knitted. All three of us love knitwear, so working with it is a no-brainer. In years to come, we joke, we’ll be like the Missonis (who we totally admire), with our own knit factory and us as the grandparents annoying the new SIBLING ‘kids’ with our general meddling and ‘back in the day’ reminiscing.

15:00 ADMIRING THE PANDA BALACLAVA
The Panda Balaclava is from our A/W11 season. It’s a collaboration with graffiti artist Pure Evil, who has an image called Pandas Rock! We were inspired by his artwork and made a full suit, complete with a cardigan, crew neck and all-in-one. I wore this balaclava for a 10 magazine photo shoot and the image ended up on the cover. It was hysterical.

15:10 STILL HARD AT WORK
It’s a mad rush to get the line sheets ready for the Paris menswear collections. I use a production programme called Zedonk. Oh, the glamour…

16:05 I HEART NIKE
We worked on a project with Nike recently, creating a running skeleton Fair Isle zip cardigan for a shoot with Olympic hopefuls. Sid and Joe had SIBLING stitched onto theirs. Self-publicist that I am, I went for COZETTE. My excuse is that I’ve always missed out on stickers and keyrings with my name on them, because my name’s so unusual. The cardigans are a bit too nice to run in…

18:30 A SOUND CHECK AT THE GEORGE & DRAGON PUB
I DJ when I can because I love it. I started when I was 30 and have been doing it ever since. Fat Tony, the DJ (not to be confused with the mafia boss in The Simpsons), did try and teach me when I was in my teens. Just think, if I’d listened to him I might be living in Miami or Ibiza right now…

I’m rubbish at mixing, but I am good at reading a crowd and getting people dancing. Music always makes me very happy. Anyone who makes music is a genius in my books.

I DJ regularly at the George & Dragon in Hackney Road, one Friday a month with my pal Guy, plus the odd Monday solo slot. It’s near my home and the staff and owners are like family.

Doing a door is another love of mine. Saying this basically means that I must be stark raving mad: who would love standing around for four hours, possibly getting shouted at?

20:00 TO 00:00 DJ TIME AND THEN BACK HOME TO BED!