They’re tender, romantic, and gauzy
Under the horseshoe-shaped hall of Florence’s Teatro della Pergola, Simone Rocha’s boys travelled between time (read: through pocket-watches and landscapes worthy of being described in thick leather diaries). For her very first standalone menswear collection, Rocha presents a distillation of her delicate vocabulary, one where romanticism echoes its characters’ silhouettes, each model appearing as the hero of their own story.
The SS27 collection never settles for a Manichean vision of what masculinity is, with tenderness and plurality pulsating at its heart. Based on Rocha’s borderless character studies, the universe created for contemporary menswear threads its needle in delicate, blossoming lace trims, tying its knot in cream boas adorned around necks or frivolously thrown into bags.
Some characters are dressed in dainty, lace-collared blouses and flowy wide-legged pants of alternating lengths, while others are clad in nappa leather or tough canvas aprons, some decorated with opalescent blossom brooches. With their own distinct uniform, each model evokes the possibility of a romantic gesture akin to climbing up sturdy vines. Detail-frilled shirts are rolled up and tightly secured by Simone Rocha encrusted silver sleeve garters — perhaps for local cornflower picking in a Florentine meadow.
The shoe of choice for Rocha’s romantic heroes steps in eternal black leather, where classic Oxfords are spiked with metal studs or buckled up with a double belt. Another standout pair includes the patent black leather ballet slippers, always complete with the classic thin bow, and sometimes pierced with a pearl detail. All in all, the Simone Rocha man proves to be moving with assurance between blue blooms and pierced details, never having to settle for only one.
Words by Lora Lolev
Images courtesy of the brand
