Roland Mouret RTW Spring 2019
Roland Mouret is evolving. “I’ve been going through a phase, as a designer who has had a strong moment in his career because of a silhouette, how do you move on to a new silhouette? To really move on, you have to deconstruct [the old] silhouette to create a new one,” he told WWD. “It’s been 13 years since I did the Galaxy dress. I chose my box, I defined it, and it’s nice now to come out of it and choose another box.”
This re-education, which began last season, has led him back to the kind of things he was doing pre-Galaxy: exploring a fluidity that has allowed him to redefine his “relationship to the female body.”
The concept of education ties neatly with the collection’s thematic inspiration, the 1974 soft porn film “Emmanuelle,” with its themes of female sexual empowerment, which in turn relates to Mouret’s other inspirations for spring: The #MeToo and Time’s Up movements.
He translated this into a collection that he said was rooted in the individuality of the wearer, with pieces designed to mix ‘n’ match, as opposed to showing “full looks.” His newfound fluidity flowed throughout, in the plum hammered satin coat dress that opened behind to reveal a flash of back and draped to loose tails, in a silk dress that was caftan on one arm and cuffed sleeve on the other, and in the tailoring, with wide, flowing trousers or asymmetric skirts that wrapped and draped in a cascade.
Mouret played with pleats, using techniques learned in his 20s in Paris with Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake, deploying them in a bouncy sky blue plissé halter dress with a handkerchief hem and an Escher-like, 3-D-pleated, white shirtdress.
Looks like low-slung, wide-leg trousers in buttercup plissé with a sporty black side stripe and a white jumpsuit with a plunging neckline and wafting side panels exuded a confident, louche attitude — but the collection still had plenty of Mouret’s subversive sex appeal in the mix, too.
Launch Gallery: Roland Mouret RTW Spring 2019
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