London Calling: Roksanda Ilincic's Spring Store Opening

Roksanda Ilincic with her daughter Efimia.
Photo: Courtesy of Roksanda Ilincic

The tallest, willowiest member of London’s young establishment East End designer gang is staking her claim on the poshest West End shopping ground. Two weeks ago, a surprise display of unmistakable color-blocked dresses by Roksanda Ilincic appeared at 9 Mount Street with a notice on the window declaring: OPENING SPRING 2014. “It’s a big milestone for me and my label, and one of those rare moments in life when I feel that dreams sometimes do turn into reality,” she said with a smile.

Roksanda’s arrival practically turns a swath of London’s most elite shopping neighborhood into block party packed with British designer friends. Swing around the corner from Berkeley Square (where the nightingales sing) and along the imposing curve of red-brick Edwardian houses at the start of Mount Street, and it’s there you’ll see Roksanda’s spacious interior. This is the place where the red-lipsticked thirty-six-year-old with an addiction to vintage YSL is about to paint an entire picture of her quirkily feminine world. She’s kicked it off with a teaser installation designed in collaboration with the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation—vivid, abstract-art inspired dresses which Net-A-Porter will launch exclusively on November 6.

Photo: Courtesy of Roksanda Ilincic

Roksanda’s new bolt-hole is almost next door to Nicholas Kirkwood’s ragingly successful shoe shop, right opposite Loewe (which will be stocked with J.W. Anderson’s designs for the label by next fall), and just a couple of doors along the row from the yet-unannounced address at which Christopher Kane will be opening his first store. Just along the same street, under tantalizing hoardings, is the vast Céline flagship Phoebe Philo which will open next year. Solange Azagury-Partridge’s new exotic jewelry box is positioned around the corner in Carlos Place. A short trot onwards, facing the Connaught hotel, and there’s Roland Mouret, the pioneering British designer in this area (which is designated by the halo term ‘Mayfair”) who has long been serving clients in his beautiful, many-storied townhouse. It is here that high-net-worth individuals are given to stay, lunch at Scott’s or Harry’s Bar, and then take in a spot of serious post-prandial fashion spending.

Clockwise from top left: Cate Blanchett, Jessica Chastain, Emma Stone, Carey Mulligan, Amanda Seyfried, and the Duchess of Cambridge
Photo: (clockwise from top left) Brendon Thorne/Getty Images; Michael Loccisano/Getty Images; Fotonoticias/FilmMagic; POOL - Mark Cuthbert/UK Press via Getty Images; Luca Teuchmann/WireImage; John Shearer/Getty Images for MRC

But what distinguishes a Roksanda Ilincic? “I’m inspired by art, architecture, and the notion of comfort and practicality,” she says. Over time—ever since she stepped out of Central Saint Martins—she’s serially used references to the bright side of 20th-century modernism:Ellsworth Kelly, Lygia Clark, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Oscar Niemeyer’s buildings in Brasilia, which she had seen on a family holiday expedition. The state of grace her design has reached can now be identified in the way she handles a silhouette, often with something exaggerated going on in the volume of a shoulder line, an oversize flourish of a bow, a chic explosion of a pom-pom corsage, an aerated flounce in a hem, or maybe a surprise streak of multicolored train pouring down the back of an otherwise sober A-line column. Other Ilincic-isms: her contrast-color waistbands, using opposing fabrics front and back, and the crowning gesture of a turban, headscarf or big, fat hair bow. (She can’t resist. She wears them, too.)

Often, she’s at her best in her resort collections, like this one. Something about it brings out the best in her sunny nature, as does her swimwear collection. “I design it just the way I design dresses,” she says. 

Looks from Roksanda Ilincic Spring 2014 swimwear
Photo: Courtesy of Roksanda Ilincic

Like all her great sister-designers, everything Roksanda designs flows from the way she lives, from her passion for abstract art to the scheme for her store (by avant-garde architect David Adjaye, who designed the first home for Ilincic and her husband Philip Bueno del Mesquita) to the adorable line of dresses for little girls, Blossom, which just happened to pop out naturally not long after the birth of her daughter, Efimia. “I remembered that my mother, Ranka, always used to have dresses made for me from the off-cuts of material from her own things when I was growing up in Belgrade,” she laughs. (A lot in Roksanda’s references to the exuberant color and poufy shapes of the eighties can be traced back to the influence of Ranka, a trained pharmacist with a hankering for high style in the then-communist Yugoslavia). Efimia and her little London friends model for mommy’s lookbook. So who’s the latest customer to be wearing Roksanda? None other than Harper Beckham. 

David Beckham with Harper Beckham in Blossom.
Photo: Cau/Blet/Sipa/Newscom

All that’s good news for the women who wear Roksanda, the people who’ve discovered how her vivid flair for “appearance” dressing undercuts formality to the exact degree it fits in with all the rules of appropriateness, while still standing out as elegantly characterful. Just like the designer herself, who sails through British fashion events, all cheekbones and bright lipstick, wearing the most dramatic of her long pieces (she wears long and midi full-time), and always accessorized with something from her personal hoard of mid-century modern jewelry. 

These days, Roksanda’s aesthetic is discreetly championed by the ultimate triumvirate of theDuchess of Cambridge, Samantha Cameron, and Michelle Obama, who all appreciate the high-impact simplicity of her signature crepe pieces for public parades, that demanding daytime slot in the wardrobe which includes such panics as “weddings” and “conferences” in other women’s lives. 

But, she also attracts individualists who love exploiting the drama of her eye-strobing  color combinations, especially when worn against a super-pale skin or clashed with strong hair color: Cate Blanchett, Florence Welch, and Liz Goldwyn being prime examples.