a total love for her craft.” So – after attending interviews
with the vague notion of going to work for someone else,
but having been told the manner in which she designed was
too left field for a placement with a fashion house – through
Kennedy, Simone somewhat accidentally founded her
eponymous brand.
At London Fashion Week, on Kennedy’s Fashion East
runways, Simone began translating her teenage rebellion into
tulle. By s/s ’12, the John Rocha frills she’d hijacked from
the rail, or the schoolgirl shirting she’d stuff under tracksuits
to smoke cigarettes in the alley behind her family home,
became deconstructed polos and oversize blazers layered with
transparencies. That collection earned her an official spot on
the LFW calendar; and then, as she matured, so did her
aesthetic. For s/s ’16, she presented a collection she had
designed while pregnant with her daughter Valentine Ming- “I was in Japan and I didn’t
know yet, but I was kind of
tripping” – which married
perversely sugary pinks with
Nobuyoshi Araki-inflected
harnesses (“When I look
back at it, I love it because it
was so provocative: honestly,
you’re pregnant; you’re having
sex”). Aged 29, and finding
herself at a turning point for
her nascent brand, Simone
only took a month for
maternity leave. She went on
to create a collection that
reflected the truth of her own
experience: swaddling stoles;
medical aprons; jewellery
resembling dripping blood;
undulating shapes that
bore more than a passing
resemblance to placentas.
“It was very difficult,” she
recalls. “Women are under so
much pressure to be a certain
way – there’s a real stigma to
be, like, ‘I’m so happy I’ve
given birth,’ but not everyone
feels like that. The way that
I design, I can’t tell a lie.”
The season would prove a
standout moment in her
career, and one that perfectly showcased the multifaceted
exploration of womanhood that makes her work so alluring:
the fantasy of pregnancy offset against its unsettling realities
and human physicality. It’s those uncanny dichotomies that
prevail through her work, preventing the prettiest gowns
from tipping into whimsy and ensuring the women wearing
them never feel coloured by saccharine girlishness. (“Girly’s
kind of prissy,” Rocha once told me. “I’ve always liked being
feminine, but feeling female rather than sweet.”) “I don’t
think femininity is soft,” she reflects now. “I think it is all
the parts of a woman that make you very strong, but showing
them in a way that it is still inviting. It’s something that is
in everybody – and that doesn’t matter if you’re big, small,
fat, tall, gay, straight. If you have oxygen running through
your body, there is something that has feminine value inside
of you, and I love translating that into clothes.”
Equally, the duality of her heritage has proven formative - and the Irish wilderness she adores positioned beside
Chinese propriety makes for a magnetic contrast. While this
season examined legendary rascals of Irish folklore, her s/s ’19
collection explored ceremonial conservatism through the lens
of Imperial China, and the dialogue between the two cultures
has regularly marked her work. “Growing up, I was very
different,” she recalls. “In Ireland, I didn’t look like anybody
else – and then, when I went to Hong Kong, I didn’t look
like anybody there, either. But it wasn’t weird – it felt powerful,
because I felt special. And it suited me: I’ve never been the
sort of person to be in the gang. I’ve always been an outsider.
In fact, it wasn’t until I met the Dover Street Market family
that I felt part of a community – and that’s just because
everyone’s an outsider and we all come together.”
If Louise Wilson and Lulu Kennedy were the catalysts for
Rocha’s creative liberation, it was Dover Street Market’s
Adrian Joffe and Rei Kawakubo who set her on the path to
commercial success – after
meeting her in a Milan
showroom, they were one of
the first retailers to invest in
her designs while offering her
bountiful creative support.
Alongside their avant-garde
offering of the Japanese
establishment and young
international talent, Simone’s
clothes flew off the rails – and
within just a few years, she’d
made enough to commission
her father to design her
flagship store on Mount
Street in Mayfair. Filled with
art by Louise Bourgeois and
Ren Ri, and Perspex display
cases beneath bleeding-rose
ceiling cornices inspired by
those found in her parents’
Dublin home, it was a temple
to her aesthetic – and
established a template that
has since been replicated
in New York and Hong
Kong. Along with her 98
international retailers, the
stores are thriving – and,
beyond that are extensions of
the brand community. Visit
any one of them and it’s clear
that the women working behind the pink onyx counters are
more than sales assistants: they are fully fledged embodiments
of her brand. “That’s what’s most important: that they feel
so Simone Rocha, that they mix the clothes, from all different
seasons, with their own personality, their own style,” she
says. “Some of my team feel like family members. We’re like
this weird big blob of people. I suppose we’ve become a sort
of... I don’t want to say it, but a religion.”
That inclusive atmosphere is the same that marks her
shows – and never more so than for s/s ’20, when the fashion
industry was summoned to the outskirts of north London
to observe a cast including multigenerational Irish actors
(plus Lesley Manville) circle a dilapidated theatre to the
sound of contemporary Irish folk band Lankum. The season
paid homage to the wardrobes of the Wren Boys, a motley
crew of mischievous men who parade through Irish towns
on St Stephen’s Day to “hunt the wren”, knocking on front
OPPOSITE: SIMONE WEARS COAT, EARRINGS AND RINGS. ALL SIMONE ROCHA doors and demanding money from residents. Inspired by >20504-20-Well-SimoneRocha_2017930.indd 205 12/02/2020 10:56