Everyone and anyone in fashion right now will tell you that in terms of designers in their ascendancy, Simone Rocha is the one to know. Although, as we’ve written before, she actually does come from a venerated fashion family, spiritually and metaphorically it would seem that’s she daughter of two of fashion’s most legendary women: Coco Chanel and Rei Kawakubo. The tweeds, the knits, the undone finishing, the pearls, the length, the elegance, the rebellion. The elegance.
All runway images courtesy Simone Rocha
Her runway show last Saturday night was true poetry; an exploration of keeping it all together, and allowing it to sometimes fall apart. As Simone shared with us in this exclusive feature interview, maternity is a key theme in all her work, but now that the 29 year-old is a mother herself, that reference is all the more personal.
Our relationship with the house of Simone Rocha is an intimate one as well. Two days after the show, Nordstrom Vice President of Creative Project Olivia Kim, along with her buying team, visited the brand’s North London showroom to begin selecting the looks that will hallmark our fall season. This photo journal takes you along—behind the scenes, up-close, and very personal.
Simone’s show took place, as it did last year, in a gilded historic mansion on the West End. (The invitation was a black and white fold-out posture depicting the grand space.) It began softly, in straw tones and pinks, and then gradually yielded to dark wovens and layers of sheer along with heavy coats and bags that the models often held close to their bodies as if huddling.
The Simone Rocha invitation on my hotel bed.
In the program note placed on our seats at the show—and given prominent display again in the showroom—was a sort of lyrical song-story from Simone. A way of explaining without explaining where she was coming from, and what she hoped that we would see.
When we arrived for our appointment, Simone’s staff showed us to a small table amid racks that held the collection; this, and their entire canal-side showroom, would be Olivia and her team’s office for the better part of four hours while they poured over fabrications, silhouettes, colors, materials and more—and weighed all of these against what they know SPACE customers love and want and need.
The experience of first witnessing these things—“tailored tulle, tinsel tweed … enveloping, smothering”—on the runway and then touching and feeling them—“unraveling, reweaving … embellished breast”—in person is a lot like your experience in our stores. When you’ve watched a show perhaps on live stream or you’ve seen the images here … and then you see the collection show up in magazine editorials before the season officially hits … and then when it arrives at Nordstrom, the sense of discovery, learning and adaption can be felt as a rush.
And like you, we’re eager to really try things on.
Before long, the desk was abandoned and Olivia, Raul, and Sarah were out in the pieces. To recognize Simone’s staff in these pictures, just look for the women wearing current season Simone Rocha styles.
Simone’s mother, Odette, above.
It’s hard to know where to start, so the staff simply begin dressing the three showroom models on-hand in their favorite dresses and complete looks. As this happens, they’re talking to Olivia and team about the subsets of looks within each collection—the tulle pieces, the net pieces, the coats, the knits.
Both Olivia and Raul are experts in the line; Olivia has been buying it since before she opened SPACE in the summer of 2015. She had specific questions about how this collection’s smaller stories related to seasons past, and Simone’s team relayed information about certain elements that walked the show but would not be put into production and offered for fall. There isn’t so much an order or a lack of order to the conversation, just a natural dance of interest and obsession, a way of falling in love and understanding what that new relationship is going to mean for you.
My favorite part, as an observer more than a participant, is seeing the pieces on the runway and the racks, and then watching how the design teams put them together—and how Raul and Olivia work and rework them. The showroom models are dressed in the team’s selections, and then adored, inspected, photographed, noted and documented, and excused with instructions for the next look.
Often times an item will be available with different finishings or details; embellished or not embellished, long or short. Overheard several times that day: “Oh, for sure, we’ll take it beaded.”
After all the looks are chosen—or at least mostly chosen, it’s time to move on to shoes and accessories. The brogues, flats, slides, sneakers and chunky heels that ground the collection play a big part in the overall look. As in our recent SPACE editorial, it’s all about a balancing the gossamer edge and stylized volume with a foundation that’s mostly functional and a little fantastical.
On the accessories end, it’s a matter of adding a dash of color and a stripe of extravagance, but it’s more than that, too. The handbags, chokers and brooches? They complete the story, tying back to the purposefully half-tacked, trailing adornments on sleeves and collars (see above). This collection’s earrings are particular standouts, and definitely not the only evidence we’ve seen that the single statement is still a very strong one.
The images here don’t necessarily represent all that you’ll see come summer as the collection begins to ship, but we do hope they convey Simone’s vision as we understand it. Now that it’s out in the world, her team will be at work having these things cut, sewn and finished—by the best in the business in Italy, in London, and around the world.
On our end, there’s still work to be done, too; numbers crunched, love reconciled, orders finalized. As with everything, the waiting is the hardest part.
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SHOP: current season Simone Rocha at SPACE
—Laura Cassidy
via Nordstrom Fashion Blog http://ift.tt/1UjhpjP
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