Alessandro Vigilante is settling in at Rochas, honing shapes and playing with color. In a way, gaming out a look is not so different from designing a home, he noted during a preview. One of the original Swans, Gloria Vanderbilt, kept company with Babe Paley on the mood board, along with images of their homes in Paris and Jamaica. A guiding inspiration was Vanderbilt’s observation about personal style: “Decoration is autobiography.”
Vigilante said he started by looking at some period jewelry befitting that kind of woman, picking up on a shell jewelry piece with turquoise and coral by Verdura and turning it into a chambray top with tie shoulders and coral tweed trousers, for example. Elsewhere, sorbet hues—daffodil, lavender, mint—served to break up classic black and white. “A mix of colors is really important because it reflects the Rochas woman,” Vigilante said, adding that he wanted to steer away from trends in favor of taking cues from how Marcel Rochas approached color and fabric.
“Today we need more attention on details and self-expression in a gentle, sophisticated and feminine way,” he stated. The Rochas version of relaxed dressing leaves no room for hoodies, sneakers or naked dressing.
But it might mean doing custom fabrics that riff on vintage rosebud wallpaper, here on a pants or skirt ensemble with shoes to match. Taken separately, some pieces looked like solid building blocks, among them a flowing pair of black trousers, a periwinkle shirred bomber, a ladylike cardigan with froissé trim, a voluminous navy cotton bomber, shown here with a leather kimono belt. Coats with shirred details at the waist or cuffs neatly captured a micro-trend for next spring. A couple of evening dresses with flowing trumpet sleeves looked like possible photo-op contenders. Other pieces, for example a white and lilac striped jacquard shirt cut so that the sleeves could also be worn as a belt, felt contrary to the ease the designer said he was looking to achieve.
Vigilante is being very deliberate and careful about mining whatever he can in the Rochas archives: a long dress in lace jacquard was based on one produced about 100 years ago, now rendered in technical fabric. That may be a new twist on the founder’s sensibility and taste, but what the house needs most now is a recognizable signature—beyond any logo—that today’s consumer can connect with immediately. Genuinely wearable shoes would be nice, too.
