rokh Autumn/Winter 2019 Collection

EXT. AUSTIN, TX – DAY

rokh Autumn/ Winter 2019 explores a nostalgia connected to designer Rok Hwang’s youth, growing up in Austin, Texas.

The collection evokes the cinematic style of Spielberg and Gus van Sant, reflecting the collective fears of 1980s and 1990s America, while embodying the spirit of its Southwest. Yet the pieces have an international appeal that speaks to women in 2019.

Intuition forms the foundation of rokh, with a collection predicated on functionality and choice. Multiple fastenings give the option to conceal and reveal; to deconstruct and reassemble.

From this restraint comes relief in the form of freeing, voluminous, silk separates, like breaking out from a space of trepidation to safety. Like emerging from darkness to light. The same feeling is reflected in floral wallpaper prints, appearing on smock-sleeved dresses and shirts, that see the domestic disassembled and taken into the great outdoors.

Outerwear continues to be a key category, with cotton gabardine and patent leather trenches, and the return of rokh’s signature duffle coat. Each offers versatility in fit and form with its multiple-fastenings.

Breaking through the muted tones of the collection’s contemporary outerwear is the vigour and optimism of youth. Bursts of blue and yellow are visible beneath jackets, and floral and chain-link prints developed in-house in London. The sun-bleached silks of dresses and shirts see paisley bleed into sunset orange.

The handbags, too, are bold, and freeingly functional with removable pochettes made of fine Italian leather. This season introduces a new style, alongside the concertina File A: the File tote, a sleek clasp-fasten shoulder bag, precision-cut with sumptuous lambskin interior.

Ultimately, rokh’s tungsten-tinged trip into 1980s suburbia offers light relief from the darkness of the everyday. It’s evident, too, in the cinematic distortions of knitted prints in vivid green and yellow. Because this isn’t a dispiriting darkness. It’s daywear.