Rochas is gunning for a comeback under the creative direction of Alessandro Vigilante. There’s a lot of work to do here—after all, Rochas is best known for fragrances these days—so logically enough the designer started back at square one, draping a salon in the Hôtel d’Évreux in hibiscus pink and rustling up some Marcel Rochas signatures like squared jacket necklines, a peplum or an hourglass jacket to jog the fashion world’s memory. Asked to describe what Rochas should mean today, Vigilante replied “elegance, simplicity and youth,” and he piled on a lot of fantasy while he was at it, but mercifully stopped short of naked dressing.
The point of departure was a 1939 photograph by Carlo Mollino entitled “Fairytales for Adults,” which shows a model stepping out of a wardrobe in a satin gown. Behind her, one divines a closet filled not just with clothes, but also with curios. Harking back to those times, Vigilante picked out French lace with a scalloped Art Deco motif, fashioning it into little slip dresses in champagne beige or black adorned with lacy ribbons whose tails were left to flutter as the wearer moved (those lace stockings were actually an archival re-creation). Backstage, the moodboard cited the indomitable Diana Vreeland, who proclaimed “the eye has to travel.” And so it did here, alighting on variously clever and improbable ideas. In addition to those slip dresses, several looks made a case for dressed-down fancy, for example in margarita green cargo pants cut in duchesse satin, or a two-tiered duchesse skirt in petrol blue paired with a lighter blue wool cardigan. Many of the fabrics, such as a chocolate brocade, technical, froissé or dévoré velvet, and emerald satin, were lush. Most accessories and some of the clothes—a blanket wrap, a skirt sewn with curlicued silver ribbons—hinted at a sly wit and a taste for surrealism. But the Rochas woman has been all over the map of late and Vigilante comes backed by big ambitions. Let’s see what materializes in that closet whenever she decides to step out of the boudoir.
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