Simone Rocha Spring 2016 RTW Collection

Tie me up, tie me down – just make sure to use a lovely bit of rope.

Simone Rocha married the tough with the tender to brilliant effect in a collection inspired by a recent trip to Kyoto, and the bondage photographs of Nobuyoshi Araki. She was thinking about bamboo forests and vintage kimono prints, too.

Rocha admitted backstage that she was not at her best during the Kyoto trip earlier this year. She was in the early stages of pregnancy and experienced Kyoto in an exhausted daze, magnified by jet lag, “which is why there’s such a trippy vibe to the collection,” said Rocha, whose first baby is due in November.

The collection – Rocha’s strongest and most polished yet – was full of exciting texture and contrast, as in the bondagelike woven ropes that crisscrossed her gossamer dresses with their puff sleeves and cloqué circle skirts; the thick and slightly menacing strips of fabric that tied at the throats of floral-print dresses, and the innocent looking ribbons that bound arms to the bodies of languid, Empire-style dresses, restricting models’ movements.

Rocha and her team wove all of the bondagelike ties by hand in the studio, using macramé techniques on materials such as silicone and rope. Overall, the designer said she was thinking of a “hyper-modern femininity.”

The hard and soft contrast also came in the form of spongy Neoprene dresses. They were short, boxy and tailored, with patch pockets and oversize sculpted bows planted on shoulders and hips. The linear geometry of bamboo forests, meanwhile, came through in sheer olive dresses with a crosshatch pattern, and resembled the blurred image on her show invitation.

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