Simone Rocha | Fall Winter 2021/2022 | Fashion Show

A troupe of Simone Rocha biker ballerinas and rebellious schoolgirls were stomping through the parish church of St. John’s Hyde Park last weekend. The location was one more in the series of venues with an historical aura about them that she loves to treat her audience to. There was no audience this time, of course, just a few crew members and Rocha’s cinematographer partner Eoin McLoughlin, there to film it. But nevertheless, the frisson traveled through the screen.

It was both tough and poignantly pretty, in the way only Rocha can put across. She’d called the collection Winter Roses, as she explained earlier, Zooming from her studio in East London. “Fragile rebels. It’s about being very protective and hiding the fragility—then having a flower creeping through the collection. Flowers that then kind of become the dresses. I love that visceral feeling you get from shows, and I’m devastated people won’t see it in person,” she admitted. “But it made me want to make things that are even more tactile.”

Her narrative spanned black leather biker jackets, curved into the waist and sprouting frills from the shoulders of Edwardian balloon sleeves; jackets and dresses with clusters of 3-d satin roses growing across them; and exploding asymmetries of layered sugar pink tulle. A garland of white-and-ivory flowers poured in a sideways cascade over a pink net ballet skirt, breathtakingly. Wound into all was her jewelry: faux natural pearls hand-painted with roses; white porcelain cameo earrings.

“Well,” she shrugged ruefully, “the only thing you’re allowed to do in all this is work. All you do is work.” She’s had a pretty busy pandemic year of it, to put it mildly. She’s produced two collections, designed her extensive collaboration with H&M, and has a lockdown baby on the way. Meanwhile, there’s been co-homeschooling for her five year old, Valentine. “Maybe that’s why this show took a school-like, educational turn,” she laughed. “With all these deconstructed pleated pinafores and white shirts that started to come into it.”

Whatever else has been going on, the pandemic has certainly been no block to Rocha’s creativity and her ability to infuse emotion into her presentations. Applause is one thing that’s missing from all these digital experiences. So let’s hear it for Simone Rocha now—this was lovely.

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