Roland Mouret might be fixed in many people's minds as the designer of supereffective figure-hugging cocktail dresses, but he's canny enough to foresee he'll need another string to his bow now that future Champagne expenditure is likely to be just slightly more on the meager side. With this collection, he trained his thoughts far more on day clothes calibrated for women whose primary focus is keeping employed, rather than pleasing (or snaring) a man.
Thankfully, this was hardly "careerwear." Mouret had gone away and developed knitwear for the first time, factoring in his observation of how the young professional women around him really dress. Sleek legs, tops, and jackets were his answer—and that lithe silhouette came across, with the luxury amplified, in gilded dégradé crocodile-embossed jersey dresses and skinny leggings. Mouret also had plenty of short, zippered jackets and pleat-front, narrow-ankle pants, covering "separates" before getting too deeply into evening. He'd concentrated especially on developing what he calls the "TTD," a drapey multitasking wardrobe tool that can be used as a tunic, top, or dress. It appeared layered under short jackets and over pants.
The low-frequency erotic charge distinctive of Mouret's look was fully present, though. The touches on his signature dresses—like the back zippers and the inside-out seaming (where the surplus seam allowance forms external, wavy demi-frill, which shivers when the wearer walks)—were now displaced provocatively to the left of the spine, so that the eye was forced downward to mull over where these ended, at the top of one buttock. He included evening dresses—one in bottle green with long sleeves and a thigh slit looked new for Mouret—but the overall impression was that this was a carefully muted outing, using plenty of almost no-color shades. If at times the pace smacked too much of the "selling collection," there was more than enough here to reinforce Mouret's reputation as someone who works hard to find creative functional fashion solutions that speak to needs rather than mere froth.
