Alessandra Rich’s girls seem to have spent their quarantines in flirtatious mode—at least this was what the fall collection’s video suggested. A blonde bombshell sashayed in a classy hotel’s marbled lobby wearing a tight-fitted midi pencil skirt, sheer black stockings, and studded stilettos; she stretched languidly on a four-poster bed in a black lace see-through number; and she talked on the phone clothed (so to speak) in a black jumper with an embroidered feline at the front. As per the press notes, “She moves in the house like a jungle cat, searching for her pleasure spot.” The collection was titled Lust Days.
Zooming from her studio in Milan, where she has spent an unglamorous lockdown like the rest of us, Rich said that what inspired her was the craving for freedom, travel, and a life unencumbered by the limitations of our present circumstances: “I haven’t been able to go back to my home in London for six months,” she said. No wonder the feeling of breaking free was on her mind. She said the song she listened most to while designing the collection was “Stairway to Heaven.”
Rich indulged in seductive prettiness here. Her models looked sweet in midi floral dresses with jeweled buttons and boxy tartan jackets over sassy minidresses. Argyle cardigans were given a shot of shine with hot fixes of diamond-patterned glitter and worn cheekily with high-waisted culottes or tweedy pencil skirts. “I loosely based the collection on a ’70s vibe because it was a time of such creativity and freedom,” she said. Lusting over freedom is surely an universal activity these days.
