AnOther unravels the core components of the S/S17 Simone Rocha woman via Ahmad Swaid's Fashion Card Collectibles
The Simone Rocha woman cannot be reduced to a simple seasonal sentiment. No, she’s far more complicated than that – and Rocha’s eponymous label continues to speak to her intricate, multifaceted nature. For Spring/Summer 2017, it was seeing Jackie Nickerson’s evocative photographs of African agricultural workers, pitched against 18th-Century Old Master paintings at Dublin’s National Gallery of Ireland that prompted the Ireland-born, London-based designer to charge her modern, romantic sensibility with a newfound utilitarian strength. This, when imbued with her recurring clerical undertones, translated into church-white broderie anglaise trenchcoats with matching gloves, Lucite-heeled wellington boots and embroidered sheer dresses with frilled contours. Check coats were tailored to peel precariously off one shoulder, revealing her signature sloped puff-shoulder shirts. It was both carnal and conservative, pastoral but worldly, grounded yet celestial – a beautiful cacophony.
