Show Report
As with so many collections this season, Mouret started with length, dropping it well below the knee on curvy frocks in dull chartreuse , black and navy.
Roland Mouret is in a good place right now. He's opening his first shop - a five-storey Mayfair monolith housing couture workshops, menswear, womenswear and everything in-between. And he's just bought back his own name - hence none of this 'RM by the Designer Formerly Known As=85' business. Roland Mouret read the invite to his show, loud and proud, and the collection itself was to an extent a return to Mouret's mood of the past.
As with so many collections this season, Mouret started with length, dropping it well below the knee on curvy frocks in dull chartreuse , black and navy. For the past few seasons, Mouret has been preoccupied with day-dressing, and with floaty, easily-wrapped pieces based on simple fabric shapes and apron ties pulled around the body, but for this collection Mouret returned to his first love: those suction-tailored frocks, dressed up for evening or down for day. No doubt he'd rather we avoid the dreaded G-spot, but there was more than a touch of the Galaxy to some of those numbers, folded and pleated tight around the figure with all the figure-flattering control of a forties girdle.
There were easier pieces too - Mouret has learned his audience is anxious for those too, hence the easy shirtdresses in spearmint crepe de chine, floaty frocks and easy kimonos in simple neutrals, and wide trousers cropped at the shin above hefty ankle-strap shoes. Those all look like great daytime alternatives, but it was Mouret's return to the tourniquet tailoring that first made his name (and, incidentally, also made many other fortunes from high-street to high-fashion) that was the big story. It was a familiar tale, admittedly, but when Mouret tells it so well we're happy to hear it four or five times over.
