Independent British designer Simone Rocha has long worked with a palette of crimson reds, creamy whites, and sharp blacks. The clothing she makes for women is not cut from the mold of corporate dressing, but it nonetheless carries a distinctly female power of its own.
Where did this propensity for the feminine come from? Rocha explained to Elle in 2018 that she was one of the only girls in a school class of 13 boys. “It was nearly all lads in tracksuits. So it made me really girly— dresses, skirts and knee socks,” she said.
There is a prettiness to Rocha’s creations, and at times the subversive presence of something more carnal, anatomical. They bring to mind the words of Keira Knightley, that paradigm of the English heroine rose, who shocked her audience when she penned an essay on her daughter’s birth: “You came out with your eyes open. Arms up in the air. Screaming. They put you on to me, covered in blood, vernix […] pulsating, gasping, screaming. I remember […] the vomit, the blood, the stitches […] life pulsating.”
Rocha creates frothy pieces in embroidered tulle, but also earrings that look like blood drops. A page from her masterfully curated A Magazine (2019) brings to mind Megan Fox’s murderous star turn in “Jennifer’s Body.”
This is decidedly not the femininity of, say, Proenza Schouler’s businesswear, nor the streamlined presence of financial powerhouse Sallie Krawcheck.
It is, instead, something closer to the traditional womanhood of a political figure like Amy Coney Barrett, and no less potent. Much criticism has been made of Coney Barrett’s plentiful family and her charismatic Catholicism. She does not fit the archetypal image of the high-flying career femme, and yet she has ascended to one of the most important positions in American government. An anomaly? Hardly. There are many potential visions of feminine power, as a designer like Simone Rocha shows. It is not necessary to emulate masculinity in order to achieve status or manage high responsibility.
