Simone Rocha’s co-ed summer show, named The Dress Rehearsal, was held at the English National Ballet HQ, a long trek out to the east of London in a newly-built development zone of high-rises. She didn’t use the black-draped theater space for a dance-related entertainment, though; save for a couple of pairs of ballet flats at the end, her shoes were chunky platforms or heavy Crocs, and her 51 models filed around four sides of sides of a rectangle in a conventional show manner.
A theme of roses—maybe an idea of bouquets thrown to ballerinas, maybe not—was played out at first in 3-D whorls of fabric. Then followed real, long-stemmed pale pink roses, stuffed inside sheer garments. There was a pink satin mini-dress that looked almost like an entire rose-bud in itself.
As the sequence drew on, birthday or wedding cakes took over from roses. Swagged effects imitating old-fashioned icing sugar were prettily rendered across bouncy crinolines, and in one case, running across the entirety of a men’s marching shirt and shorts combo.
Slightly strange and rather practical by turns (see the taffeta tracksuits), the collection had all of the hallmarks of a winning Simone Rocha proposition. It would’ve been nice to dive into it more with her, but the long drive to get to the next show had to begin.
