Kat had been moved by the Simone Rocha Spring/Summer show. The designer, an Irish ex-St Martin’s grad just like her, had been inspired by Connemara in the West of Ireland.
Rain-slicked Connemara roads
Simone Rocha S/S 14
Simone Rocha S/S 14
That was Kat’s country. She knew that landscape and could see all the characteristics of it running through the designer’s collection. The slick wet roads, the swell of the mountains that Yeats held so dear, the gentle green against the infinite gray skies, the cheerful sprinkles of sheep, the deserted beaches and, of course, Da’s farm. It was all there.
Connemara mountains
Simone Rocha S/S 14
There were also remnants of Simone’s Catholic upbringing––Kat’s too––trailing from the collection. Somehow, it provoked Kat to dig out old photos of her Holy Communion day.
She hadn’t looked at them in years.
All the paraphernalia associated with that rite in her life, so forgotten about now, so significant at the time.
Simone Rocha S/S 14
Holy Communion dress
- Holy Communion veil
The dress, veils, gloves, ankle socks with frills, white shoes, pearls. She realized she must have looked like a little specter floating up the aisle with that nervous smile in place.
White can be spooky.
Simone Rocha S/S 14 catwalk hair
Form Connemara hillside down to the Atlantic
The hair had been styled to look like the barbed wire along the Sky Road that stops walkers being blown off into the Atlantic.
Some of the models had tulle wrapped around their heads. Rocha had done interesting things with lace, trapped it inside plastic. It might have been intended to symbolize the often suffocating presence of Irish Catholicism, but it also reminded Kat of Miss Havisham.
Swathed in her yellowing lace and threadbare tulle rotting away in the old house. Great Expectations happened to be Kat’s favourite book as a child.
Yes, Simone Rocha had captured all the essential elements of an Irish childhood.
Simone Rocha S/S 14
Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham from Great Expectations
You can buy Silk for the Feed Dogs here.
