Simone Rocha’s co-ed summer show, named The Dress Rehearsal, was held at the English National Ballet HQ, a long trek out to the east of London in a newly-built development zone of high-rises. She didn’t use the black-draped theater space for a dance-related entertainment, though; save for a couple of pairs of ballet flats at the end, her shoes were chunky platforms or heavy Crocs, and her 51 models filed around four sides of sides of a rectangle in a conventional show manner.
A theme of roses—maybe an idea of bouquets thrown to ballerinas, maybe not—was played out at first in 3-D whorls of fabric. Then followed real, long-stemmed pale pink roses, stuffed inside sheer garments. There was a pink satin mini-dress that looked almost like an entire rose-bud in itself.
As the sequence drew on, birthday or wedding cakes took over from roses. Swagged effects imitating old-fashioned icing sugar were prettily rendered across bouncy crinolines, and in one case, running across the entirety of a men’s marching shirt and shorts combo.
Slightly strange and rather practical by turns (see the taffeta tracksuits), the collection had all of the hallmarks of a winning Simone Rocha proposition. It would’ve been nice to dive into it more with her, but the long drive to get to the next show had to begin.
Collection
This article was originally published on Vogue Runway.
