December 13: What I like about Simone Rocha, the London-based female deisigner, is her ironic romance kept in her clothes- a pearl-applied dress might seem to be naive, but in relity it shows a lot of body; the florals she intensively used in her SS15 weren’t just florals you imagine- that was a strong connection to her Korean grandmothers way of dressing and Irish parents conceptual style. This girl got secrets…
The impossible to pronounce CHEREVICHKIOTVICHKI (in Russian: Черевички от Bички ) stands for “a shoe by Victoria” in the old Slavic language, but said in a playful childish manner. The beautiful story of Cherevichkiotvichki begins in Lithuania where Victoria grew up surrounded by the remains of Soviet culture and the uprising of Baltic heritage. Born in the family of factory workers she grew up to be fascinated by the extinct utilitarian lifestyle and nurtured memories of her childhood past transforming them into series of everyday objects – shoes. This stunning self-taught shoemaker performs copious amounts of research empathizing traditional craftsman-ship between her London studio and the atelier in Italy. I am truly in love with this brand- the shoes feel so full of attitude, like if they had their own life! And the way the accessories are presented also feels unique.
I hear Vanessa Paradis Pourtant when I look at Simone Rocha’s SS15 collection. It’s so romantic, oh my! Ad cute! Those model’s curly hair styled with these fur trimmed broques and fragile dresses feel so truly naive and sublime at the same time… Rocha has always been ambitious with her textiles, but what felt new this season was the sensitivity and specificity with which she deployed them: a light touch of embroidery on pink mesh, the graphic counterpoint of floral embellishment on a sheer white sheath, that lurid marabou snaking around a dress of silvery brocade. The collection, having a lot of themes, felt all the time truly girlie and interesting (my heart belongs to those shoes with fur!) with those rose appliqued sheer dresses. Surely, this will be a retail challenge- but Simone’s fashion is always best-sellng at London’s Dover Street Market, so no worries!
Tom Ford sexy ups his label with every season. But this was over the top! Tricky velvet suits, sheer tops, sequin flowers sticked to nipples, Gucci-esque white gowns… a real show-girl time. The soundtrack was a narcotized female version of “Addicted to Love” (the vocalist’s emphasis on the addiction, rather than the love), to which extraordinarily proportioned girls—rail thin, seven feet tall in their platform clogs—teetered down the mirrored catwalk, eyes laden with mascara, hair in teased-out shags. Tom’s SS15 isn’t really about the “sexy” office go-out, but it’s surely for women which feel sexy in their skin… and attitude.
Brutalistic venue. Loud music. Nipples. Plastic. Stripes. Provocative. Georges Rousse. Minimal, but abstract. The star is born. Thomas Tait, the latest treasure of London showed a striking collection, under the wings of LVMH. And it’s totally something you didn’t see before (well, only if you saw the older collections by Tait). “I work so hard on the clothes inside and out, and most of the time it does boil down to a straight up runway image and people only get a fraction of the story.” Thomas Tait might me slightly similar to Gareth Pugh- also a Brit doing extravagant fashion. But what I love more about Tait is the fact that his clothes are wearable. The leather geometrical cut-out skirts, satin tops, transparency… who cares about the nipple? We live in the times, where being scared of your own nipple is funny. Transparent dresses were worn with metallic stilettos that morphed into nude tights, and ran alongside block coloured leather jackets with only one sleeve. I also loved the stripe episode! It was sexy but pretty “ugly”. Just like the colours, which were eye catchy, but for most very unattractive. This collection just says one thing: whatever. Whatever people say, Thomas Tait is Thomas Tait. And that counts for now. Love that vibe.
