How often are rock royalty name-checked, particularly as the Seventies and Eighties make their rounds in the minds and moodboards? Roland Mouret name-checked Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks in his show notes, invoking the decadence of a Victorian rock scene, where you'd half expect Dorian Grey to burst forth with a guitar, looking for a groupie to lure into his den of iniquity. But in the designer's hands, this exercise in inspiration came interpreted in the same vein as Reign's costume design had been: drawing up contemporary items with kinship to the theme but also legible in their own right.
So first, the season's star fabric, velvet, stuck out, spliced into fluid diagonals, cut in liquid sheaths, injected as panels. Often, clothes were simple dresses or separates, livened up with the honeycomb lace whose alveoli were lined in graphic patterns, or piped to reveal their structure. More than most, Mouret knows how to work with a woman's silhouette, and his designs reflected this, sliding perfectly along the curves, nipping and tucking what needed to be, flaring and kicking about where it was most fetching. Using a compact palette of emerald green, royal purple, burgundy lashed with black and white, he went for an elongated silhouette that fell to the ankle. But the decoration tripped up his otherwise fluid work, jumbling the message as it flora contradicted edges, honeycomb lace distracted from velvets.
“As we move ahead into not knowing what comes next: the only thing that makes live exciting and possible, is a permanent, intolerable uncertainty" read the last thoughts of the notes. One thing that any woman can count on is that the Gallic designer will try give her what she consciously or unconsciously desires. This season, that will be the supine black dress with Bordeaux circles climbing up the sides, the rich wrapping of a purple coat or the surprisingly sporty blouson and skirt combinations.
