Emotional thread
Surely the most exquisite, memorable and emotional show at London Fashion Week spring/summer ’20 belonged to 33-year-old Simone Rocha. The Irish designer commandeered the Victorian theatre at Alexandra Palace, a grand old dame of a space, recently awakened from an 80-year slumber.
Rocha filled it with Irish choral music and 46 models (several of whom were actually Irish theatre actresses), clad in her mysterious, layered silks and voluminous embroideries, some inspired by faded Victorian wallpaper and broken Delftware, others accessorised with spooky macramé. Could the flash of scarlet sequins be a reference to blood?
Her starting point was the folkloric tradition of ‘wren boys’ in her native Ireland. “My mother
