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Daily Fashion & Runway News
Serbian-born designer Roksanda Ilincic brings an avant-garde, couture sensibility to her eponymous line, which debuted in London in 2005 as part of Topshop's New Generation initiative. The Central Saint Martins grad showed a small collection of voluminous fifties-inspired frocks with an Eastern European flavor, and detailing like brocade, tiered sleeves, and rosettes. But what makes Ilincic’s work especially unique is that her clothes are hand-sewn by a seamstress in her native Belgrade. The collections have won the hearts of critics—Vogue, and the like—and PYTs with edge (i.e., Margherita Missoni and Kate Hudson). For a small, burgeoning label, Ilincic’s dresses in shiny fabrics (silk and satin) with Empire cuts and retro embellishments (poufs, trains, fur) have also done well commercially in the U.K. at big-league retailers like Harvey Nichols.
“My things are quite romantic, but they have an oddness of color and proportion. I hate it if people say, 'Oh, it's so pretty!' ”—Roksanda Ilincic Vogue
“When I'm designing dresses, I think of myself first -in that way I'm a typical female designer. But because I used to model, people tend to assume that I just design for tall, skinny waifs, whereas in fact it's the opposite. Often on shoots I was dolled up in such a way that I felt incredibly uncomfortable and unnatural, and no woman wants clothes that make them feel like that, no matter what the fantasy may be.”—Roksanda Ilincic The Times (London)
“Roksanda Ilincic has carved out a reputation as London's avant-garde dressmaker—following somewhere in the slipstream of Lanvin and Saint Laurent. She uses a limited number of materials—satin, silk, ribbon, and handmade haberdashery flowers—relying more on an artless happenstance of wrapping and tying than precision-cutting and finishing.”—Sarah Mower Style.com
Roksanda Ilincic