Roksanda Ilincic Fall/Winter 2015/16

Finding a balance between opposing forces is often the raison d’être of a fashion designer, and for Roksanda Ilincic that has often meant pairing fruity hues with voluminous, flat forms, inspired by one female artist after another. However, since opening her London boutique last June and dropping the Ilincic from her eponymous line, Roksanda has loosened up her template, one that ran the risk of stagnation until the textural melee of today’s fall 2015 outing turned any such thinking on its head.

This season, the overt polish and shine subsided, with dense carpet textures, lush fur, and a welcome rawness of finish clashing with the nipped-and-tucked propriety of her uptown silhouette. Slinky turtleneck knits were layered under long gilets, culottes, and pencil skirts that swung with the heavy drape of tweedy jacquards fraying at the seams, while fitted shift dresses, blazers, and coats in flecked felt came topped with lashings of bright-hued fox tucked into amulet belts.


Despite her switch in surface treatment, Ilincic’s exotic color sensibility returned in full force, with lipstick shades of candy pink and port wine striped through with cobalt and a vivid marigold orange each ducking and diving across fox-fur chubbys and wavy, strata-like wool jacquards. Geological, crystalline references were apparent in that bright and earthy mix; however, backstage, Ilincic was talking about the forest, and the rusty colors of autumnal foliage that she built up through those bolder accents towards opulent outerwear pieces like a chocolate sheepskin overcoat (another magenta version was striped with mink). She brought that woodland message home in the final looks, where smocks and a pencil skirt traced with windowpane checks positively rustled with hand-cut organza leaves.

Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories 

Photo Credit/Source: VOGUE

Photos: Jason Lloyd-Evans (backstage) / Alessandro Garofalo (runway)

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'Victoriana Florals by Burberry Prorsum Fall/Winter 2015/16'

In Viv Albertine’s recent and very readable memoir, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. yes, seriously, that’s the title, so good she named it thrice the former guitarist in the 1970s all-girl London punk band the Slits recalls her teenage years, when she was bedecked in a purple maxi dress bought from Kensington Market and listening to Marc Bolan, soaking up that patchouli-scented moment of hippie abandon to Eastern mysticism. Flash forward to 2015 and to Burberry Prorsum, and we’re sitting listening, pre-show, to Marc Bolan and, less than a mile from where Kensington Market once stood, going to watch a show full of Christopher Bailey’s imaginings of that era: lightly quilted floral and paisley tiered dresses, cabans, and ponchos; trench coats in great patchwork prints or elongated and cut from claret wool; and looooong suede camouflage patched boots.

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Roksanda Ilincic Fall/Winter 2014/15

Roksanda Ilincic had a great Fall/Winter '14/15 show. She may have felt this by the flock of reporters who literally swarmed her within seconds of her bow, but her audience sensed it a few minutes earlier while watching her industrial, colorful, architectural designs hit the runway. She started off softly. The first looks were subdued, almost monastic-felt dresses that mixed giant panels of navy, bordeaux, sand, and cornflower blue. They were cinched with large metal belts that added an urban and modern sensibility.

Then hemlines and waistlines started getting chopped up into exaggerated, asymmetrical silhouettes, a theme among London designers this season. The same goes for embellishment. Artfully, graphically arranged beads are the new print, and Ilincic’s creations were inspired by the work of American artists Jessica Stockholder and Mel Bochner (known, respectively, for her bright, playful sculptures made of simple cutout shapes, and his blocky and busy word paintings), as well as the jagged landscape and clever use-what-you-can-find construction of Rio de Janeiro’s shantytowns.

All this motivated Ilincic to rework her own rubber and plastic scraps from past collections, cut them into a million different small shapes, and then attach every last one to the front of a cool, long, sleeveless dress, a T-shirt, and a strapless dress that would make an excellent choice for evening. That all this energy was grounded by Nicholas Kirkwood’s pointed-toe tassel loafers and a supersimple pulled-back hairstyle made this collection all the more accessible for real women. Ilincic proved that herself as, before facing said swarm of reporters after the show, she swiped a colorblocked fur coat off the rack and threw it on over her black turtleneck, ready for anything.

For her recent Cruise 2015 presentation four weeks ago Roksanda stated: "My colorblocking is always done in a way that's more like a collage, less about lines." Ilincic said, she is confident betting on blue and burgundy now that she can showcase her complete aesthetic within her first boutique, which was opened recently at 9 Mount Street, London's West End.

Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories

Photo Credit/Source: VOGUE
Photography by Kim Weston Arnold (Indigitalimages) & Sonny Vandervelde

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'Pollock-y Paintures by Roksanda Ilincic Cruise 2015' 

'Signatures are: Color is one, and it's hard to miss here. Yellow, as bright and pungent as a lemon, cuts through all of the darker pieces and plays nicely with the collection's toylike blue and pink.' 

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