In case you're curious, the woman with the high-voltage smile who appears in this season's Roland Mouret lookbook is Tiphaine de Lussy, knitwear designer, art patron, and wife of Dinos Chapman. Her casting is a reflection of Mouret's theme—an ongoing one, but emphasized this season—of real women. Typically, hearing a designer say he's paid homage to "real women" is a bit like having a waiter tell you that all the desserts are butter-free and made from bran. But Mouret has virtually no interest in clothes that are nutritious—his take seems to be, real women want to wear brightly colored skintight dresses and lavish, rather eccentric outerwear like a long, cape-gilet hybrid with a nonfunctioning belt. Huzzah!
Here's to the real women who like superhero-style color-blocking, and fuchsia dresses with volume draped down the back, and a shrug of long, black goat hair. Some real women like drama, Mouret understands. They also like the odd tight-fitting dress to be made of knit and have some give, and occasionally, they want to wear things like blouses and pants, which could explain the designer's addition of more separates into the mix. The strength of these clothes, though, wasn't their functionality—it was their exuberance. Mouret's real women seem like ones you'd be happy to know.
