Following on from last season's Elizabethan farthingales, Simone Rocha added eighteenth century panniers to skirts, prom dresses and trenchcoats for Spring/Summer 2015 in a collection that she, like others this season, dedicated to the late Professor Louise Wilson.
Actually, the pannier-like curves attached to the sides of garments were inspired, Rocha said, by artist Richard Gorman. But they added bustle and weight to skirting and outerwear that felt historically referential.
Models wore delicate lace gloves and resembled, in their sombre garb, nothing so much as a flock of Victorian mourners. The pieces came in four phases, first black satin, then oyster, floral applique and baby pink, simple but structured, some entirely sheer, others trimmed in marabou and ostrich.
There were accomplished black brocade skirt suits, trapeze-line swing jackets over knee-length skirts in a homage to the sort of skewed, nostalgic vision of female dress that this designer likes to work with. It isn't an issue of modesty - the tulle dress on which rosettes had been attached left little to the imagination.
Rocha is able to convey emotion with a lightness of touch that is to be truly admired - a shift in tone, colour or fabrication signified at so many points during this collection a change in mood. From grief to reflection, via a brash and embossed 3D floral print, to, ultimately, a serene if sober conclusion. These clothes were beautiful, and personal.
