Curviform scrolls, soft drapery, gigantic tailoring, wild textures and unpredictable color: Roksanda Ilincic is essentially a sculptor in fabric who’s building a body of work season on season.
Perhaps that’s why she consistently looks beyond fashion to women in avant-garde contemporary art for, if not direct “inspiration,” parallels in how she puts collections together. The practice of the late Dame Phyllida Barlow springboarded her winter show. “She used materials that were previously basically discarded, or looked like it. So there’s lots of foam, cardboard, duct tape, wires and MDF,” said Ilincic. Snatches of an interview with Barlow broke into the soundtrack—her thoughts on the value of negative space, and on having the courage to push ideas.
There will be some amongst Roksanda’s art world followers who fully picked up on those insider references. Her core aficionados are intellectual women who embrace bold shapes and textures, like the black fringed raffia smothering a coat or embedded in a tuxedo skirt suit, or her colorful multi-stranded textile (uncut fil coupe) art pieces. Even the 3D foam sculptures of her finale might catch the eye of somebody wanting to take up a lot of space in these times of extreme event dressing.
Ilincic said she’d also considered the effect of sound in her design—the rattle of giant paillettes on skirts and dresses which trailed under her enveloping oversized evening coats. There were also slim satin asymmetric dresses in vivid colors, and draped daywear silhouettes in trad menswear fabrics: These are the Roksanda classics she owns.
