"I love big shapes, and I thought I would push it," said Roksanda Ilincic. "So I started a dress like a cloud and it just became bigger and bigger." The slightly off-kilter charm of this Serbian-born designer s clothes—cocktail dressing that teeters on the brink of being a bit bonkers—is coming more into its own with every season. She s established such signatures as big bows, unhemmed edges, charmeuse slips, and puffed-up volumes, but this collection pushed her repertoire further.
Inspired, she said, by paintings of the Spanish court, Ilincic padded hips into vaguely eighteenth-century pannier shapes with the tulle understuffing she also uses to perk out an oversize pair of sleeves, froth a peplum, or create unexpectedly huge bustles in back of slim dresses. Taking traditional English brocades from Gainsborough silks (a weaver that makes wall hangings for the Queen s boudoir, no less), she turned the fabric inside out and used the loose gold threads as decoration. The result: a series of rich but cool-looking pieces with a quirky, yet essentially feminine presence.
