ROCHA A FABRIC OF REVERIE AND NOSTALGIA

Simone Rocha returned to the Old Bailey London’s historic courthouse where Oscar Wilde was tried for “gross indecency” and where stern verdicts have been handed down to men for centuries. It was within these walls where one might imagine the very silence of the law being carved that the designer reappeared on Sunday for a show entirely dedicated to women, having previously unveiled the first elements of her menswear line at Pitti Uomo in June. She savored, she says, the pleasure of focusing solely on women a sort of “coming out,” perhaps and of approaching clothing as one discovers a familiar landscape in a new light: a nightgown transformed into a dress, “babydoll” finery, ballgowns like suspended dreams, and an aviator jacket a solitary, rugged note amidst this dreamlike fabric, serving as a nod to Adrienne Bolland.

She pushed her fabrics to their absolute limits, forcing them into unexpected unions: gabardine mingled with the tulle of a long coat just as stone mingles with cloud; light, almost ethereal dresses settled upon diamond-patterned knit shorts, like a bird alighting on a branch too fragile to bear its weight. Strips of organza, washed through a slow, painstaking process, morphed into feathers, forming boas worthy of an imaginary aviary.

The entire collection seemed born of chiaroscuro of those deep shades of red, black, and petrol blue that strikingly recall a painting held by a Jesuit community in Dublin; a canvas long dismissed as a mere copy, but now restored to its true identity and displayed at the National Gallery of Ireland as if finally returned to its own light. It was this work that inspired Rocha: the entire collection bears the mark of these romantic exchanges of a transparency that seemed to transport us back to the nostalgia-draped 1930s. Indeed, sometimes all classics need to be reborn is to be viewed in a light in which they had never before been seen.

FM