EVERYTHING’S COME UP ROSES

Marie Kelly on the floral trend that’s been given an edge for AW19

Roses bloomed bountifully on any number of catwalks this season; Prada, Valentino, Rochas, Dries Van Noten, Noir and Alexander McQueen to name but a few. No other flower is so symbolically rich, or so ridden with cliché. It’s true, trite platitudes are ten a penny, but visually, the rose motif has an enduring allure that so many designers seemed determined to capitalise on for AW19.

While Pierpaolo Piccioli explained his use of rose prints at Italian fashion house Valentino as a representation of “modern romanticism”, Julien Dossena at Paco Rabanne said they were an ode to “old-school Hollywood”, and Miuccia Prada employed them to demonstrate the “romance and fear” she feels define our times, it’s tempting to sidestep the analysis and simply marvel at how beautifully the stereotype-soaked flower was reimagined for modern women who want their romantic references served up with enough strength and purpose to make them palatable.

Winner of the Queen Elizabeth II Award for Design last year, Richard Quinn certainly delivered, taking the fragile character of a rose and making it thoroughly hardy. Prints were fleshy and robust on silhouettes that at times were positively masculine – a blazer with shoulders as broad as Herman Munster’s, a superhero-worthy cape with matching rose-print leggings. There was absolutely nothing shy and retiring about this floral display.

Whereas Quinn employed his exceptional printmaking skills to bring to life rose motifs, at Alexander

McQueen, creative director Sarah Burton envisioned enormous red and pink roses sculpted from vast sheets of fabric, creating sculptural garments that would look more at home in a gallery than in your wardrobe or mine. Despite the intricate and delicate manipulation of silk taffeta that must have taken expert seamstresses hours upon hours to refine, the finished products had a strength of character and mettle to them that goes to the heart of the kind of duality that exists around the rose motif: it’s both fragile and fierce – roses do come with thorns, after all.

Dries Van Noten summed it up perfectly: “I wanted roses, but not sweet roses – roses with an edge, roses for now.” The Belgian designer’s passion for gardening is well known, and the acres of lush planting and expansive lawns that surround his 19th century neoclassical mansion near Antwerp well documented too. Although floral prints are a long-standing signature of the Dries Van Noten brand, for the first time this season, the prints came directly from his own garden. He picked roses, salvias, dahlias and delphiniums, had them individually photographed and then printed onto diaphanous dresses and silken separates, as well as more pragmatic pieces such as a lacquered trench coat

“There’s a duality that exists around the rose motif: it’s both fragile and fierce – roses do come with thorns, after all.”

and grey mannish shirt. I love the use of a traditionally feminine symbol on something androgynous if not completely boyish. Van Noten’s determination to show “the diseases, the black spot, the imperfections” of his real-life flowers felt so current in its mood. It was as if he was reminding us that beauty is not about perfection. It’s about being real and authentic.

Dossena’s approach to AW19 at Paco Rabanne felt similarly zeitgeisty. “It’s about how you uplift yourself through dress. In the end, that’s all we expect from fashion. You know – that thrill when you wear something special? It gives you power; it gives you confidence.” Many of us need no further analysis of a collection other than that it was made to make us feel fabulous.

And there was plenty at Paco Rabanne to be excited by. A black velvet rose-print tuxedo jacket, which sounds ridiculously glamorous, but when styled with unfussy straight-cut pants and cowboy boots looked much more accessible for everyday wear; a ditsy rose-print duchesse satin top and skirt, styled separately; and rose corsages worn beneath the collars of button-front shirts. Victoria Beckham accessorised several of her SS20 looks with neck corsages, so consider this a micro-trend with legs.

While Miuccia Prada’s collection sought to “narrate the good and the bad together”– Women’s Wear Daily described her offering as “romance with a military subplot” – the designer’s narrative, no matter how challenging or bold, never once overshadowed the gorgeousness and wearability of the clothes. She’s a designer who understands how to marry politics and fashion beautifully. My favourite piece was a white button-front with graphic rose motif. The silhouette and print were both simple, strong, unapologetic and modern. This reimagining of a fragile bloom into a punchy graphic embodied the complicated contrasts inherent in this ageold flower – love, desire, death and destruction. On knitwear, giant red roses had a pixelated appearance that cleverly referenced the digital age in which we now live, while clusters of roses sewn onto the hip of a blue dress with black lace overlay appeared designed to look droopy and forlorn; the flower’s power ebbing before it wilts and dies. The last look on the Prada runway, this was in stark contrast to look number three with its exuberant single red rose motif, which exuded energy, strength and determination.

It wasn’t all floral feistiness, though. Whimsy had its place, at labels such as Luisa Beccaria, Brock Collection, Fashion East, Zimmermann, Y/Project, and Blumarine, in particular, a house that has had a long-standing love affair with roses; its founder Anna Molinari is known as queen of the roses because of her love for the flower, and Blumarine’s signature flower is the cabbage rose. This season, beautiful bright red sequinned roses adorned everything from a slinky gold jumpsuit to a leopard-print mini dress and a pair of distressed denims.

Author Martin Amis once commented, “Only in art will the rose grow without the thorn.” At Blumarine, roses were pretty, playful and with no hard edges.

Just as Amis says.