Rochas S/S 06 Paris

[YohjiAddict]

naver.com

 

[YohjiAddict]

naver.com

 

[dior_couture1245]

Such a special collection. Thanks for reposting and reviving.

 

[YohjiAddict]

A collection best appreciated in HQ, like in most of Olivier's work, it's the tiniest details that reveal his mastership of the craft.

The way some of the tops in the final dresses are constructed through asymetrical piping that reflect the ondulating roots of the water lilies that adorn the skirts is quite a clever touch, he's subtle enough to mantain a sense of symmetry in the openings of said tops that makes it surprising when you look up close. Black on black also helps in disguising said detail.

Other favorites include Lisa Cant's shoulder baring white dress and the navy one that's only emboidered at the hem, to make it seem as if the woman wearing is walking through Monet's Giverny flower beds. The painterly theme is definitely a precursor to his amazing Nina Ricci spring 2009 show.

 

[GivenchyHomme]

This is spectacular. It's dreamy yet wearable. It's unfortunate that romantic clothing has been replaced by "Street" dressing. Romance and Prettiness has become taboo thanks to the industry valuing commerce over art. His collection for fall 2020 feels like the modernized version of this. It's interesting to see how he's changed over the years and matured. You have to be able to find a mix between whimsy and commercial and he's finally reached that level. Perhaps Azzaro will allow him to elevate his ideas to someplace close to this era. One can certainly dream!

 

[YohjiAddict]

naver.com

 

[Lola701]

Such a fabulous collection! This was IMO his most achieved and « right for the house » collection but it came too late in his stint at Rochas. This Demi-Couture Rochas is the superior than current Couture.
He has a fabulous flou that he is able to translate in tailoring...

This could have been Nina Ricci now that I think about that.

Olivier, much like Lacroix was really a victim of bad timing...

 

[dior_couture1245]

^^Olivier’s Demi-Couture Rochas most certainly is superior to current Couture...even 15 years later.

Looking forward to what Olivier might bring to the table when he begins showing Couture at Azzaro.

 

[dior_couture1245]

Olivier, much like Lacroix was really a victim of bad timing...

Financially, yes.

But creatively, contextually, I can’t imagine it having happened at a better time. The mood of fashion was right, the models were right, the scale and hierarchy of the industry was right, the attitude was right...

The thought of these same Rochas collections being shown today...the world is too ugly now to handle these shows.

If shown now, these precious clothes would be worn by worthless, gremlin models, to an audience of phonies, all of them with their obnoxious iPhones in their hands shoved out onto the runway, broadcasting to the masses of uninformed fashion consumers and picked apart on Vogue.com by their staff of low IQ writers like clickbait vultures, then to be styled by a nobody, shot by some cheap hack photographer ending up in the pages of the magazine on just another astroturfed pop star we’re told we should care about.

No. It was the right time and the only time these collections could have existed in. Part of what makes these collections so special, to me at least, is that they were so fleeting...like Lacroix, Olivier’s vision for Rochas was simply too beautiful and refined for this world. The very fact that it had to end only adds to the sensitivity, poetry and emotion of its beauty. We got a taste and we don’t deserve more than that.

 

[Lola701]

Financially, yes.

But creatively, contextually, I can’t imagine it having happened at a better time. The mood of fashion was right, the models were right, the scale and hierarchy of the industry was right, the attitude was right...

The thought of these same Rochas collections being shown today...the world is too ugly now to handle these shows.

If shown now, these precious clothes would be worn by worthless, gremlin models, to an audience of phonies, all of them with their obnoxious iPhones in their hands shoved out onto the runway, broadcasting to the masses of uninformed fashion consumers and picked apart on Vogue.com by their staff of low IQ writers like clickbait vultures, then to be styled by a nobody, shot by some cheap hack photographer ending up in the pages of the magazine on just another astroturfed pop star we’re told we should care about.

No. It was the right time and the only time these collections could have existed in. Part of what makes these collections so special, to me at least, is that they were so fleeting...like Lacroix, Olivier’s vision for Rochas was simply too beautiful and refined for this world. The very fact that it had to end only adds to the sensitivity, poetry and emotion of its beauty. We got a taste and we don’t deserve more than that.

While a kinda agree and believe there’s no bad timing for such creativity, I think launching Lacroix in 1988 with Couture being the main force behind the machine and giving Rochas to Olivier weren’t really the best decisions.
Except for Chanel, all the success stories of the 80’s were made in RTW. And while Lacroix and Ferré at Dior (and later Montana at Lanvin or Versace) gave a new energy to Couture, the big comeback to Couture came in the mid 90’s. Women were ready for romance again and Galliano helped a lot with that.

‘The success of Lacroix was mainly American and unfortunately, the gulf war almost killed his business from the start...On top of enduring all the schemes of Pierre Bergé and YSL. Plus, him doing Pucci in the 00’s was total desperation. I think that Olivier should have remained independent ( and do some consulting...like Nicolas used to do before Tom Ford called him) and Anna should have fought for him to be at Givenchy instead of Julien MacDonald. MacDonald was very hits & misses and yes, he worked with Karl and it helped him a lot but I’ve always been a champion of him at Givenchy. The concept of Demi-Couture really took off in the late 00’s with Balmain tbh...

But yes, this is science-fiction at this point and it’s easy to write this down here...

 

[tricotineacetat]

I fail to see how he could have been anyhow not a good fit for Rochas, taking into account that the house was really dormant before his arrival and he managed to put the name back on the map and generate a moment that made people look at it. While Rochas was a niche brand (probably still is) and the prices very high for the time, it was in all the right stores and the brand was developing in the right direction in terms of product diversity and visibility.

Establishing a brand from zero is no easy undertaking and the untimely end of his tenure at Rochas was NOT his personal failure but for the brand rights falling into the hands of a conglomerate like P&G that had not a single fashion brand in it's portfolio - Olivier departed Rochas when P&G kept postponing the budget to keep the operations going and it was de facto impossible keep up operations of the brand. That is a fact largely overlooked and unfairly changed into a narrative that made him look like he ran the business to the wall by his own fault.

 

[Lola701]

I fail to see how he could have been anyhow not a good fit for Rochas, taking into account that the house was really dormant before his arrival and he managed to put the name back on the map and generate a moment that made people look at it. While Rochas was a niche brand (probably still is) and the prices very high for the time, it was in all the right stores and the brand was developing in the right direction in terms of product diversity and visibility.

Establishing a brand from zero is no easy undertaking and the untimely end of his tenure at Rochas was NOT his personal failure but for the brand rights falling into the hands of a conglomerate like P&G that had not a single fashion brand in it's portfolio - Olivier departed Rochas when P&G kept postponing the budget to keep the operations going and it was de facto impossible keep up operations of the brand. That is a fact largely overlooked and unfairly changed into a narrative that made him look like he ran the business to the wall by his own fault.

We are ok on everything but my point is exactly that he was too good for Rochas and Nina Ricci. That’s why I brought up Givenchy because when you have such a talent who has been pretty consistent all his career, you give him a better home. In the early 00’s everybody was quite naive... The success of Gucci and Vuitton, Dior, Prada and the madness around all the houses being bought confuses a lot of people.
Yes, the clothes were too expensive and the clientele wasn’t maybe ready for that in-between (even if it kinda worked well for Nicolas Ghesquiere) but for me Olivier’s failure was due to him not being at the houses deserving of his talent. Unlike Lacroix, his problem has never been to not be able to deliver « commercial clothes ». That’s a fake narrative that people pushed in the industry. If he was given a proper Couture House, his career would have been different. Except for Lanvin, none of the houses relaunched in the early 00’s believed in RTW, everybody wanted a big leather goods business...
It took years to those executives to get that nobody wants a Rochas, Balmain or Nina Ricci bag.

Azzaro, despite not being the house of his caliber is a little bit different. I hope he will have the support he deserves this time.

 

[perfect blue]

Olivier was so good in the early 2000s and late 90s.

I have his book "She walks in beauty", I recommend it.