Roksanda Fall 2024 Ready-to-Wear Collection

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Roksanda Fall 2024 Ready-to-Wear Collection

On Valentine’s Day, Zendaya effectively trialed Roksanda Ilincic’s fall collection when she wore a burgundy jacket and tunic over pants during her London press appearance for Dune: Part Two. That tailored look opened the Roksanda show today at Tate Britain, with an audience as packed as always with her actor and artist friends.

Ilincic’s sophisticated fans are an untimid class of women who don’t necessarily need pointers to her inspiration. They’re into her vibrant color sense, revel in her extravagantly offbeat volumes and abstract drapes, and appreciate the print-craft textures she wraps into her clothes. Big dress, trail-y textiles, unconventional color? They’re gleefully up for it all.

This winter collection had all of that in abundance. In a studio preview, Ilincic was explaining how it came out of a lightbulb experience she’d had on a family excursion to Le Corbusier’s house on Cap Martin in the South of France. It’s not what you’re thinking. “It’s actually a wooden cabin, about 20 meters square. What struck me about it—because, obviously, he’s one of my favorite architects—was how modest and humble the place was,” she related. “But everything is perfection. He called it his ‘château, filled with extravagance and gentleness.’ It made me think about who we really are, that connection with nature. How little is necessary to be happy, really.”

Something of the interior of that house attached to her design. She pointed to the melton fabrics (as in the suit Zendaya wore), which she chose because of their similarity to furnishing materials, and to the crackled leather and cream coat that seemed to have been treated to a dip in lime green laminate reminiscent of a 1960s kitchen countertop. The abstract energy of the mural Le Corbusier painted on one wall of his summer place informed the tapestry and jacquard fabric she wrapped as spontaneously sculpted dresses.

She had looked down into the Mediterranean from Cap Martin on a day when the blue sea was agitated by big waves and bright sunlight. Apparently, Le Corbusier had died while swimming there. Not a sad story, she hastened to say—because one of the greatest architects of 20th-century minimalism wanted to die in his favorite place. Hence the swirly shapes that were whirling and spiraling on the deep blue and bright yellow dresses at the end.

Ilincic’s hands-on character is palpable. Her collection is directly her. Maybe that’s what major women in other branches of the arts are cottoning to. Zendaya joined the Roksanda club after Beyoncé commissioned one of her hugest dresses for the London leg of her tour last year. Who is next?

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