For this London designer, don’t call it power dressing
SHE is the brand of choice for some of the world’s most high-profile women, from C-suite executives to glossy political wives and princesses.
But Roksanda Ilincic, the Serbianborn, London-based fashion designer whose understated role in the local fashion scene over the past decade has suddenly changed into marquee status, bristled at the suggestion her appeal was rooted in “power dressing” when pushed on the subject in her airy East London studio last month.
“I am not one for labels, and I particularly don’t like that label,” Ilincic, 40, said. Wearing her long, dark hair loose and clad in one of her own designs, she clasped a mug of herbal tea and smiled politely. Nearby, her team was putting the finishing touches of her latest collection at London Fashion Week. That show was held Monday, accompanied by the pianist Michael Nyman.
“That term – ‘power dressing’. To me, it has all the wrong connotations; all ’80s shoulder pads and forced, uncomfortable shapes,” added Ilincic, a former architecture student and a Central St Martins graduate. “It suggests a type of dressing where women are not able to be their authentic selves. In fact, they try very deliberately not to be themselves. And that is the antithesis of what my brand is all about.”
Certainly Roksanda, the designer’s line founded in 2005, offers an alternate approach to more conventional ideas about how powerful women should dress – one that has to do with voluminous, unabashedly feminine shapes, unexpected color combinations and idiosyncratic block prints.
Yet Samantha Cameron chose a navy geometric Roksanda shift when she left 10 Downing Street for the final time last year, after her husband, David Cameron, stepped down as the British prime minister. The former first lady Michelle Obama wore a draped jewel-tone Roksanda dress for her trip to Downing Street in 2011, and packed two colour-block dresses for her tour of Asia in 2015. And the new first lady, Melania Trump, chose a white version of the lanternsleeved Margot dress by Roksanda for her speech at the Republican National Convention in July, having bought it herself from Net-a-Porter. It sold out immediately online.
“There is a real simplicity to her designs that allow the wearer of the clothes to be the star, and yet there’s always that splash of drama,” said Jeffrey Kalinsky, the founder of the Jeffrey boutique chain and the designer fashion director at Nordstrom, one of the leading retailers of Roksanda in the United States.
The designer is married to Philip Bueno de Mesquita (also her business partner), whom she met at St Martins in 1999 after she left her home in Belgrade to study there; they have a 6-year-old daughter, Efimia.
“I always wanted to come to London; my dream was to be taught by Louise Wilson,” Ilincic said of the celebrated St Martins professor, who died in 2014.
“I read all these articles when it came to choosing where to go to school. I suddenly had this moment, back in Serbia, that virtually every designer that really inspired me had done her course. And that was it. I went to London and never looked back.”
Now Ilincic has ambitious expansion plans. After maintaining her independence for the best part of a decade, in 2014 she accepted outside investment from the Indian businesswoman Eiesha Bharti Pasricha, leading to the first Roksanda store, which opened in June of that year on Mount Street in Mayfair.
“I deliberately grew my label very slowly and organically,” she said. “I had no business experience when I started all of this from scratch, and was very aware of that, so wanted to take my time and maintain control. And I wanted to make sure I truly understood myself and where I wanted to take my vision.”