Roland Mouret’s shop opposite The Connaught hotel is a lofty red-brick Edwardian terraced house whose original, expensively attired inhabitants probably wore bustles, corsets, and a lot of millinery to parade themselves around Mayfair. Nowadays, the turn-of-the-century interior is the backdrop for spare, modern, sexy clothes, displayed in rooms with ornate ceilings, parquet floors, and a mix of arts and crafts chenille upholstery and ’60s and ’70s moderne furniture. Mouret’s Pre-Fall lookbook was shot that way too—a woman in an environment, which was actually an antique shop off Kensington Church Street belonging to the dealer Jerome Dodd, who fills Mouret’s own habitats.
The setup brought the character of Mouret’s projected customer into clearer focus than a standard white-background lookbook. “I think you have to give people more of an idea of a whole life,” said the designer. Next time, he added, “I want to shoot in the pub in Suffolk!”—meaning his favorite local in the village where he has his weekend and holiday home.
Is this straying off the point of his clothes? Probably, as we’re missing out on the sources of high points such as his high-waisted, wide-legged pants and midi skirts, which his notes said are inspired by Northern Soul (the British club dance phenomenon in northern England in the ’70s) with a touch of Marc Bolan glam rock gold Lurex slink. Still, Roland Mouret is a lifestyle-led designer, not a retro-romantic, and the end results comprised a range of dresses, jackets, coats, and pants featuring carefully engineered planes of sporty-stretch fabric, interleaved with geometric panels of superlight tweed, and inset with chevrons of alternately sheer or opaque lace and ribbon. And yes: You could imagine that the woman who’d wear them might have her own digs in Mayfair too—among other properties. Who knows? After seeing these pictures, maybe she’ll be tempted to call Mouret for some furnishings, too.
