Roksanda’s offering for Autumn Winter 21 begins with a short film featuring three generations of one family - Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson and Daisy Bevan, as spirits inhabiting a world in the grey area between bloom and decay. Opening with Redgrave reciting Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 as snowdrops bloom contrasted by expired decomposing leaves below, it then captures those inimitable small moments; the natural unfolding of touching your companion’s hand, being quietly transfixed by birdsong, the warm awareness of writing your thoughts, the first time today you look up to the sky. Inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror, the colour palette is deeply considered, poetic and multifaceted through inky blacks, vermillions and teals as a background to blooming oranges, beech and ivory. Shot on iPhone by director Linda Brownlee, Richardson and Bevan, the shots breathe and still as we do, floating along hand painted billowing silhouettes featuring nude still lifes, highly wearable double breasted Italian wool suits with carefully pintucked sculpted dresses that perfectly balances her minimalist and voluminous sensibilities. Roksanda’s trademark handcrafted approach is particularly resonant now; she knows this and applies it with such emotion, the energy of it blooms out of the screen. Another signature of hers, the abstract woven ties, are used to this season in wool ribbon work to accent and to sculpt, an evolved touch that strikes me as an act of developing intimacy with the collection, as so many of us are now looking to pronounce what we truly want from our interactions. Upon further inspection, a standout ensemble for me is the pajama-like set combining structural and ordered lines on the cuffs and edges with streaks and daubs of expressionism suggests the larger than life narrative that Roksanda has wanted to express so dearly. These ordered stripes were custom woven in natural fabrics to create the impression of modern structures protecting the person wearing it. How fitting it is that the short film released for this collection is being projected onto Roksanda’s favourite buildings in London; The Barbican Gallery, The Tate Modern, The Old Vic Theatre and Southbank. A work of such tenderness, fragility and hope being broadcast onto these buildings which in the real world would hold the space for so much intimate and powerful connection is a deeply considered statement that has really moved me. It is bittersweet and instils a feeling in me I thought was only reserved for the cinema and the theatre. It has rendered these difficult times a little more bearable and a little more hopeful.
Companies
London Fashion Week
- Fashion and Textiles
