A few weeks ago, Reese Cooper found himself surrounded by fabric. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, many of his stores had canceled their fall 2020 orders, but Cooper had already purchased rolls of cotton, wool, corduroy, and fleece. Suddenly he had nothing to do with them, and many of his peers have found themselves in a similar bind. Even if they wanted to go ahead with a collection, their ateliers and factories are likely empty. Design and production are tactile, collaborative processes, the kind you can’t necessarily do alone or at home, so most designers have no choice but to wait it out until their studios can reopen.

Cooper found a clever solution: If he can’t produce his collection, then maybe his customers can. Today, he’s releasing the pattern for his popular chore jacket in a range of materials for just $98. It arrives in a box on your doorstep with everything you need to sew your own jacket: pre-cut fabric, the pattern, an instructional booklet, a ruler, vintage-inspired patches “so it still feels like you’re making a Reese Cooper jacket,” and a snap kit. All you need to supply is a sewing machine. “When I was starting out [in fashion], something like this would have been awesome,” he says. “When I was learning to make clothes in London, I had no idea what a pattern was. I didn’t go to fashion school or art school, and no one can really do that right now. I try to be an open book and share as much as possible, and now that I’ve figured some of this out, I felt like it would be unfair to keep it to myself.”

Making a pattern available to the public isn’t standard practice in the fashion industry, but in the current moment, Cooper’s project is bringing a new layer to the designer-consumer relationship. To wit, a piece of fabric in every kit is stitched with the following statement: This is a RCI home-sewn garment, designed by Reese Cooper and constructed by someone inspired by doing, not watching. Made with RCI materials but assembled to reflect the person wearing it.

Getting from the box of materials to the final product is a 40-step process, but Cooper insists that even a novice should be able to follow the instructions and finish their jacket within a few hours. “I’ve never considered myself a good sewer,” he says. “When I was documenting the process, it was the first time I’d been on a sewing machine in years, and I didn’t even practice—I just went for it. And it looks like a jacket!”

If the idea of spending a whole day making one garment wouldn’t have appealed in the past, most of us are looking for ways to fill the time, challenge ourselves, and learn something new in lockdown. Fashion types might take it a step further and experiment with dying their jacket, painting it, or maybe adding additional patches. “This really was just a way to avoid wasting fabrics and to give people something to do,” Cooper says. “I’m not really making money on this. If people like it, and I have more fabric leftover, I don’t see why I wouldn’t do it again with another pattern.”

As for the collections he’ll design and produce in the future, this process forced him to reconsider precisely what kinds of fabrics he should be sourcing. “I’m looking at seven different fabrics [for fall], and maybe I didn’t need all of these,” he says. “A lot of them are very seasonal, and I want to avoid that in the future. Because if something like this did happen again, I don’t want to be sitting on all of this green corduroy trying to figure out what to do with it. The alternative would be to use a basketweave fabric, or something I could easily use for other collections, too. Making things less season-specific is my biggest takeaway.”

In addition to the jacket pattern, Cooper is selling three-packs of patches for $18 and a vintage-inspired sewing kit for $28. He called it a “souvenir” of sorts, and hopes it will resonate with fans who may not be in a position to spend a lot of money right now. “This is a nice opportunity for me to start considering lower-priced options and focus on my direct-to-consumer sales, given the state of wholesale,” he says. Shop these products and his current collection at reese-cooper.com.

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