Rocha collection sustains designer’s momentum

"She goes up a notch each season," said fashion professor Louise Wilson OBE, head of Central St Martin's Master of Arts degree programme, after her former pupil Simone Rocha launched an autumn-winter 14 collection yesterday at London's Tate Modern, closing London Fashion Week.

Coming in the wake of Rocha’s successful spring-summer collection, expectations were high for the 28-year-old designer who has shot to stardom since launching her first collection three years ago. She is to create a collection for US label JBrand later this year.

“Elizabethan, young and rebellious” were the terse show notes and her use of yellow python swagged on hip and sleeve and crusted with amber beading created a shapely silhouette with a nod to the 18th century.

Equally alluring were her fitted sleeveless dresses in reptilian prints of black and green trimmed with beading with the same exaggerated hip flounces.

Rocha’s collection is highly creative and commercial, offering shaggy gilets, silver skirts and and knee-length ponyskin boots.

Worked in tartan, some shapes may have been less successful, but among the beautiful pieces that closed the show were bright red-brushed wool tulle separates (some worn with red-seamed stockings), sheer black-lace suits and delicate gold embroidered tulle dresses that were sexy and romantic with cross-generational appeal.

Snake print also slid into Anya Hindmarch’s new handbag collection, but in a very different way. The designer may have had Claes Oldenburg in mind when she sent out handbags with the vivid pop graphics of everyday household brands “treated in an extraordinary way”. Whether her well-heeled customers will want bags that look like Ariel or Frosties , is anyone’s guess.