Sexy pragmatism: a good profile for Roland Mouret’s outlook. In his new look book, he’s meted out his pieces one at a time, shooting each of them on Georgia Howorth on its own, or with underwear. It’s almost as if she’s carefully considering the merits of each skirt, top, dress, and pair of pants as she is trying them on in front of her bedroom mirror. Is this an accurate reflection of how we’re judging our relationships with clothes in the age of e-commerce, lockdown and working from home, or what?
Credit to Mouret for his insights into the point of view of his customers, and into the way of the world we’re all living in. “I thought of how every piece would work in a woman’s wardrobe, thinking about how it could fit with other designers,” he says. “Because that’s how women dress today.” That kind of honest insight made him attend even more closely to defining the fine line between reinforcing what is recognizable as “Roland Mouret,” and what could feel new.
So there are the particular Mouret points of difference in both categories. The signature construction with which he began his career plays into the folding technique of the pink skirt, and the signature dresses which won him a reputation as a maker of the It dress in the aughts. Abstracted frills, split-leg flares, and his softer, assemblages of separates—a knitted sweater with bloused sleeves; a draped khaki shirt with epaulettes, and a matching skirt —read as new. Still targeted at a Roland Mouret woman who knows how she wants to look, though: a bit more relaxed, but not giving into sweatpants.
Mouret reads his market well. Not everyone in that constituency is working from home at all times. For those women whose job is to front up in public-facing, corporate and media roles there’s a matching mask with every dress. “They’re delivered attached inside the shoulder of each one.” Designed for the new cohorts of women moving to the political front, is that? “I watch the news,” he says. “These are women who buy my clothes too.”
