Roksanda Fall 2022 Ready-to-Wear

Designers are tending to fall into two camps this season: those whose impulse is to pick up from where they were, almost as if nothing’s happened, and those who are figuring out how the lived experience of the last two years has altered the ways women want to dress. Roksanda Ilincic’s fall show—her first physical presentation since 2020—demonstrated that she definitely belongs to the latter group. The designer known best for her sophisticated takes on evening wear began with something her customers have never seen on her runway: practicality-based trousers, jumpsuits and utilitarian layers for everyday life.

“It started with me really thinking about where are we now, and what we women, and as a society, need. I came to this conclusion that we have a sort of dual reality. Part of the brain needs trousers, separates, and elegant pieces that are quite easy to incorporate into our life. Sportswear and loungewear were never part of my vocabulary, but they became so, even for me, during the pandemic,” she smiled “But then there’s also this crazy-dream instinct to want push my work even further into the hugest shapes.”

The push-pull of that cognitive dissonance effectively book-ended her collection. Past the tobacco, ochre and taupe trouser-led tailoring and her selections of hybrid blazers came passages of Roksanda home-territory dresses: fluid, printed in satin—some inset with bands of jewelry-like gilt rods. Trenches and rainproof ponchos turned up. A vast geometric patchwork-quilt gown saluted her synergistic friendship with the artist Eva Rothschild, whose angled metal sculptures—part of an exhibition at the Tate Britain gallery venue—provided the backdrop.

Then the designer translated her creative thirst for extravagant bubbles and puffy volumes into another manifestation of sportswear, a finale of technical outerwear in collaboration with Fila. There were great big duvet coats, cocoon-parkas, windshield tracksuits with bishop sleeves, snowboarding pants and moonboots. As an extension of her brand, it ticked all the exuberantly artistic and colorful boxes that bring Roksanda’s clients along with her. Even in an era when there may not be so many of the events that call for evening dress, here’s a way of keeping up head-turning standards on the street.