Rochas is aiming for a comeback under the creative direction of Alessandro Vigilante. There’s still a lot of work to be done here – Rochas is best known for its fragrances these days, after all – so logically the designer started back at square one, draping a salon at the Hôtel d’Évreux in hibiscus pink and rustling up a pair of Marcel Rochas . signatures such as square jacket necklines, a peplum or an hourglass jacket to refresh the memory of the fashion world. Asked to describe what Rochas should mean today, Vigilante replied “elegance, simplicity and youth,” piling on a pile of fantasy as he went, but mercifully stopped short of dressing naked.
The starting point was a 1939 photograph by Carlo Mollino, entitled ‘Fairytales for Adults’, which shows a model stepping out of a wardrobe in a satin dress. Behind her one sees a closet filled not only with clothes, but also with curiosities. Harkening back to that era, Vigilante chose French lace with a scalloped Art Deco motif, and made little slip dresses in champagne beige or black, decorated with lace ribbons whose tails could flutter as the wearer moved (those lace stockings were actually an archival reconstruction). . Backstage, the mood board quoted the indomitable Diana Vreeland, who proclaimed ‘the eye must travel’. And that happened here too, where we came up with several clever and unlikely ideas. In addition to the slip dresses, several looks argued for dressy chic, for example in margarita green cargo pants made of duchesse satin, or a two-layer duchesse skirt in petrol blue combined with a lighter blue wool cardigan. Many of the fabrics, such as chocolate brocade, technical velvet, froissé or dévoré velvet, and emerald green satin, were sumptuous. Most of the accessories and some of the clothing – a blanket shawl, a skirt sewn with curled silver ribbons – indicated a sly humor and a taste for surrealism. But the Rochas woman has been all over the map lately, and Vigilante is backed by big ambitions. Let’s see what happens in that closet when she decides to leave the boudoir.
