Simone Rocha Fashion show Autumn Winter 2022

    Simone Rocha is a fashion designer born in Dublin city, Ireland in 1986. In 2008 she graduated with a BA in Fashion from The National College of Art and Design in Dublin.

    Simone Rocha asked her audience to see her fall collection appear in the atmospheric cloud of a medieval hall in London’s Inns of Court. Where there is always some kind of dark suspense running under the shells of the seemingly pretty layers of her clothing. This time, as she connected backstage, it arose from the classic horror story of the four daughters and sons of an Irish king who were shifted into swans because of a jealous stepmother. It’s a truly old fable that everyone in Ireland country knows as Rocha said. The kids become swans for nine hundred years, across three distinct lakes. And when they arrive back to human form, they died.

    Understanding the backstory, you could begin to catch the absorbed shapes of wings and feathers coming through the white ruffles embedded in coats and take a visual hint from the crinolined buoyancy of skirts. Knitted balaclavas with amazing crystal embroidery around the faces—cutely strange—might at a glance seem to take on the look of not completed human. There are white swans, black swans, cygnets in mini-crinis, and knitted knickers; girls and boys. The Children of the king were royal: these swans were decorated with jewels, studded with ruby droplets, crystals, and pearls.
      Simone Rocha wasn’t attaching to the letter of the legend. The truth is that she’s made her language in her designs: her voluminous coats, big skirts, transparent voile lace-trimmed dresses layered over other biker jackets and dresses. The most stunning turn in this collection—something unique and satisfyingly weird came when she carved out the mid-section of midnight-blue velvet garments, replacing it with a sheer panel with a picture of the torso. It was gorgeous. When the theme of the collection is bypassed, a brave design coup like that will attract Simone Rocha shoppers of its own accord.