“She always thinks about herself. Don’t you think as women we have to?” said Alessandra Rich of her muse during a preview. “Not for life, just for tonight,” she said, quoting Addison Rae, who served as an inspiration for this collection.
A theme of freedom runs through all of Rich’s work. For spring it was found in socializing as defined by the Bright Young Things of the roaring ’20s. This season, the designer looked inwards, and imagined a woman alone in her bedroom, trying on different clothes and therefore different personalities.
“Don’t you have those times when you go through your wardrobe and you try everything on and you put everything on top of a pile?” the designer asked. “But the secret is, in order to really feel free in that moment, you have to be by yourself.”
Much like “the pile,” this collection had a little bit of everything. There were boudoir pieces (a pair of slingy black lace dresses and a playsuit) and Rich’s signature tea dresses in silk, tweed and lace, only this time around a few came with tasseled belts, like the ones you’d find on a dressing gown.
But there was also a leather boyfriend jacket, taffeta dresses that offered a little more volume than usual, and an array of two-piece skirt sets in a variety of prints. The highlight was a silk Hawaiian print that is meant to be “the shirt he could have left behind.” Adding to the fashion playground mood was a range of extremely fun 1980s inspired costume jewelry.
The lookbook was shot in a seedy Milan motel, the type that people use for late night encounters on circular beds. Because it’s in Italy, the parking spaces are separated by fake Roman columns, which Rich found really added to the kitchy ambience of the location. It inspired one of Rich’s team to photograph the models as they passed between the motel’s rooms, between takes. It resulted in a set of brilliant behind-the-scenes photographs that will hopefully become the campaign.