EMOTIONAL THREAD
Simone Rocha says she wants her clothes to stir the emotions. Clare Press meets the Irish designer who achieves this by drawing on memory and narrative. Styled by Kaila Matthews. Photographed by Isaac Brown.
Simone Rocha says she wants her clothes to stir the emotions, drawing on memory and narrative.
Surely the most exquisite, memorable and emotional show at London Fashion Week spring/summer ’20 belonged to 33-year-old Simone Rocha. The Irish designer commandeered the Victorian theatre at Alexandra Palace, a grand old dame of a space, recently awakened from an 80-year slumber. Rocha filled it with Irish choral music and 46 models (several of whom were actually Irish theatre actresses), clad in her mysterious, layered silks and voluminous embroideries, some inspired by faded Victorian wallpaper and broken Delftware, others accessorised with spooky macramé. Could the flash of scarlet sequins be a reference to blood?
Her starting point was the folkloric tradition of ‘wren boys’ in her native Ireland. “My mother is from the countryside,” she explains, “and it’s something we were discussing. She was talking about how they used to knock on doors, these guys all face-painted or in masks, wearing costumes they’d made from hay. They’d go around from house to house asking for money. It’s an old tradition, from way back when people used to hunt and kill wrens on Saint Stephen’s Day. The door-knocking still happens a little bit, here and there, although these days it’s probably a bit more Halloween-ish. I’m drawn to old stories,” she says. “I feel very connected to home and history. I started looking into it, and building a narrative from the fabrics.”
Rocha knew she wanted to present the collection somewhere atmospheric, with faded grandeur, “and I really wanted it to be in a circle”. When she heard about the restoration of the “Ally Pally”, which dates back to 1873, she knew she’d found her mark. “They’ve tried to preserve the crumbling plaster, and the result is magical,” she says. “If I could’ve built the set of my dreams from scratch,
“I feel very connected to home and history. I started looking into it, and building a narrative from the fabrics”
that’s what it would look like. We removed all the chairs. It was a bit of an endeavour. Totally worth it, though.”
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the future of fashion shows. A new report, put out by the Carbon Trust and Simon Lock’s digital showroom company Ordre, found that in a 12-month period, wholesale buyers criss-crossing the world to see the work of more than 5,000 designers emitted 241,000 tonnes of CO2. Perhaps we should have virtual runways? Do away with flight shame by watching them online instead of in person? Extinction Rebellion wants to see fashion weeks become a thing of the past, and even insiders, such as veteran show producer Alexandre de Betak, are questioning their role in fashion’s future – he recently told Business of Fashion that he’s convinced brands will soon start to “revisit their format”. In this context, how do we justify traditional shows?
Rocha has a back-to-basics answer. “They make us feel,” she says. “For me, it’s an essential part of my creative process. I design a collection with a beginning, middle and an end – and the show is the end. It’s theatre, music, narrative, all the elements and creatives coming together to make the clothes vibrate.
“I love that emotional response, don’t you? Like if you went to see [the late dancer] Pina Bausch and got blown away. As a designer, it’s a real privilege to be bring people together and share something with them, and make them feel something. Do we still need that? I think it has its place.”
Rocha says that the current sustainability conversation is unavoidable, and she regards that as a positive. “It’s something everybody needs to talk about. I’m not a fantasist – I don’t think fashion’s role is only to dream. I’m actually a very practical person. I think most designers today are trying to figure their way through all of this.”
Her personal route aims for the integrity of craft, with a detour via longevity. “Craft is my response, perhaps always has been. It’s something I’ve done naturally with the label,” she says, adding that her embroideries and prints are developed in her atelier in north London, where she employs about 25 people. Everything starts, she says, with fabric. “I don’t sketch or draw: I work on a stand and with a model.
“I’ve never been interested in making clothes that are fast or disposable or trend-driven,” she continues. “It’s always about evaluating, developing, retraining, rethinking and exploring. I’m after something that has a weight to it, that will last. You know, that piece that’s still going strong in 10 years’ time? I feel a lot of that comes from a handwork element.”
Rocha lives this theory in her own wardrobe, mixing pieces from old and new collections (with her staple Nike sneakers), and says “many of the people who work here do, too. And I see it in our shops or when we do our shows, that customers come proudly wearing old pieces that they love. You know what? I’m so proud to be my father’s daughter. The number of people I meet who tell me they’ve been wearing a John Rocha piece for 30 years … for me, that’s the ultimate benchmark.”
Simone Rocha is the daughter of Hong Kong-born fashion designer John Rocha and his Irish wife Odette Gleeson. Rocha grew up in Dublin, getting about in “big jumpers and short shirts from thrift stores”. At 17, she went to Ireland’s National College of Art and Design. “I did a year of multi-discipline study – painting, sculpture, textiles. I came to fashion last, but it just worked for me. I remember the feeling of realising this was where I could translate my ideas into something physical.” In London, she did her MA at Central Saint Martins with professor and course director Louise Wilson, who she appreciated for her talent and help. “I’m very lucky in that I came along in the last leg of her legacy, as it were. There’s been a few people who really helped shape my career, like Lulu Kennedy, who gave me such a huge opportunity showing through Fashion East. Adrian Joffe, who bought my collections for Dover Street Market. I remember my very first appointment with them, it was Adrian and [his wife] Rei [Kawakubo]. They gave me my first shop-within-shop.”
Now Rocha has three stores of her own (the latest opened in Hong Kong last August) and a lucrative contract with Moncler – she joined its Genius project last year. Her business remains privately owned.
Asked to drill down to the secret to her success, she says: “I don’t really see myself as a businesswoman, although I have built a good business. I have a really good team. I have made decisions for the label that have been a luxury because I am independent. For me, it’s still all in the story. To design, I have to find a thread that I feel very stimulated by, whether it’s physically or emotionally, and then I follow it. Maybe you don’t necessarily see it, or even know about it, but it’s there, giving the work its shape.”