“She is a woman of the night and ready to have fun…she’s a little bit, how would I say, mysterious, and, um….” This was a looong “um”: What was Alessandra Rich working up to? “She’s ready to party, that’s for sure.” Rich says in her clothes what she cannot quite bring herself to say in person. Her women are lionesses dressed as lambs. They look demure and think impure.
Shot for this look book in a fabulous empty villa outside Milan—“a house that looks like a nightclub and a great wild garden”—the collection was shown, as usual, in a swanky apartment opposite the Palais de Tokyo that was packed with rich Rich clients and influencer pals who relish her aptitude for upping their upholstery. Perfumed swaths of iPhones panned as each look passed. These ranged from siren-ish naive-floral fil coupe floor-lengthers with chain details at the belt to Chantilly lace boudoir eveningwear. There were some effective blouse-shirted soft tailoring outfits, mostly black and some in leather, which along with the bouclé daywear acted as a businesslike feint before the suspenders-hung bouclé short suits; sequined underwear; oligarch-bankrupting, high-slit long dresses; and explosive tulle frocks filled the highly receptive room. Rich is a rarity in that she is a woman designing womenswear that is, without doubt, built to entrance the dumbly primitive straight male eye, but which also provides an ironic high-frequency top note audible only to its wearer and her fellows.
