Roland Mouret from 'Me Too' to Laura Mars

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Feb 18, 2018

The 'Me Too' movement has rippled through this whole fashion season, and on Sunday morning informed the latest collection of Roland Mouret, albeit distilled through references to an iconic 70s movie.

The Eyes of Laura Mars, starring Faye Dunaway as a fashion photographer living on the Upper East who is brutally stalked, informed the clothes. From the baroque jacquard capes and velvet corduroy pants to the Prince of Wales mannish tailoring and the exposed-seam alpaca capes.
 
“As a fashion designer that film is our bible. I never wanted to touch it but this year the meaning of the movie is so relevant in this time of the sexualization of women for power,” opined Mouret, Sunday morning in his backstage, after taking plaudits from Arizona Muse, Daisy Lowe and Caitriona Balfe.

Presented on a maze-like catwalk inside the Royal National Theatre, inside another monument to the 70s, the new Brutalist South Bank on the Thames. 
 
Mouret certainly took his oeuvre somewhere new – with stretch chevron lace tops and baroque skirts. His clothes were empowering, and quite a few steps from his signature, scalpel-cut, sculpted cocktail hour dresses that models look like they are poured into.
 
More controversially, Mouret addressed the whole issue of sexual harassment in the fashion industry. One he can consider from several sides, seeing as this French-born designer was a male model in his early days. Later on Sunday, almost a score of female British film stars were due to stand together, each dressed in black, on Bafta’s red carpet outside London’s Royal Albert Hall, many accompanied by feminist activists rather than by their partners.
 
However, Mouret warned against a rapid rush to judgment of any individual.
 
“We are living in a world where people are guilty on Instagram before being judged. We are burning photographers like medieval witches. Normally you are innocent until proven guilty. Now it is the exact opposite. That’s why this film is relevant. As, the 1970s marks the beginning of the liberation of women. We are destroying people by pointing and judging… I was a model in Milan in the 80s so I think I know how certain things unfortunately worked in the industry.  Still, to me, people are being attacked today and being accused because of the fact they worked successfully in fashion for 20 years, so you must have done something wrong. The end of this issue is equality, which is right, but the means sometimes are not,” concluded the designer.