admin Now steeped in Rochas history, Vigilante had never entertained the idea of working for a Parisian house before. “It’s exciting when something unexpected happens,” he said. “For 16 years, I translated the vision of other creative directors; now I really need to speak in my own voice. As a dancer, everything is about the body and movement. It’s not just making fashion that has to be ‘wow,’ it’s about doing clothes that make you feel stronger, powerful, and self-confident because you feel really, really good in them.”
The designer, who turns 41 on December 23, quit dancing at 23 to attend fashion school. But its lessons are key to resituating Rochas in the current landscape, he said. The stylistic tension between Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham (both of whose techniques he has studied) offers a constant source of inspiration. So does the work of Jiří Kylián, and the “movement language” called the Gaga technique.
“Contemporary dance is open to everybody, every size, to what you want to say, and to creating new languages. And that is what I would like to do,” Vigilante said. But he doesn’t want to lose sight of the archives, either. “Being able to touch these pieces is like opening the door to Marcel’s first atelier, it gives me goosebumps,” he said as he lifted a wasp-waisted pink tulle and black lace guêpière out of tissue paper. “You discover the fabrics, sketches, the scent. You see the lace, which was really iconic for him, that I would like to renew in my own way. Lace can be intimate, feminine, and not overtly erotic. So, it’s also a challenge.”
Other house signatures include the mermaid dress, 3/4-length coats, pajama-style resort wear, and, most famously, the surrealist Oiseau (bird) dress of 1934, a long black evening sheath with a gigantic white seagull draped around the neck. There is also the memory of Rochas’s three wives: Yvonne, Rina, and the glamorous, much younger Helene, who became CEO of Rochas and was a social fixture in Paris and on the Riviera. And there is the work of predecessors he knows and admires, such as Theyskens, Dell’Acqua, and Marco Zanini.
“I would like to bring from them the femininity and delicacy, but I think there’s so much of Marcel’s that would be right for this moment, but not in a vintage or nostalgic way, a more wearable way,” Vigilante offered, running through some ideas for feathers (but not real ones), mermaid hemlines (but in different proportions), stripes, and “lots of trousers.”
