Rihanna wasn’t the only person to launch a see-now-buy-now collection this week. So did Roland Mouret, only he’s been introducing his pre-collections this way for awhile—in his store behind the elegant Mayfair red brick facade of his RM headquarters. Should you be in London, you could step in and leaf through all these pieces tomorrow—a range focused on non-uptight dressing for summer events (lots of one-shouldered asymmetry in pops of color), easy tailoring, and flowy midi coats.
There’s a loose theme in the lookbook pictures: A couple of women are seen messing about in a dilapidated house and garden in Greenwich, London. Mouret directed them to channel Big Edie and Little Edie in Grey Gardens, “Women trapped in a grand world—in their heads,” he said. “It’s this idea that clothes are an extension of who you are.” So there’s some posh tailoring in picnic checks, a humorous nod to the headscarf, and a soft unlined tweed patchworked coat.
Mouret’s never really going to turn into a designer for wild eccentrics, though. Since he started in the ’90s, the wisdom he’s accrued is a sensitivity to changing attitudes. He’s lived the shift from the shellacked, sucked-in glamour of definitive body-con cocktail dresses to the desire for something more fluid, while still retaining the stamp of his identity. “It’s about the silhouette we stand for,” he says. The square cutting, wrapping, and folding of fabric he began with is still here, giving flare to the skirt of a coat in movement, in tied waists, and in the bias geometry of his one-shoulder dresses.
The standout in this collection? Apart from the punchy red he’s used for dresses and a coat-and-trouser look, it’s the the petrol lamé silk, used in a pajama suit and in a striking caftan dress. The last might seem an eon away from the pencil-skirted, power-mesh lined Galaxy dress which made him his name in the aughts, but still, it’s fashioned from one piece of square fabric, developed from the same method of problem-solving he’s been applying since he began.
