Cream of the Crop
Review of Roksanda Spring 2025 Fashion Show
By Mark Wittmer
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Organic. Architectural. Intuitive. Vibrant.
Spring 2025 marks the first runway season since Roksanda Ilinčić sold her namesake brand after narrowly avoiding going into administration – but the designer stayed on as creative director, and this collection showed that the move may have been more than just financially prudent. With a new ability to focus entirely on her brand’s creative output, Ilinčić was able to further tap into what’s essential: the urban artist’s relationship with the natural world, the role of humanity in preserving or destroying our earthly heritage.
These questions arose through an exploration of the work of Hungarian-American conceptual artist Agnes Denes, and in particular her iconic land art work Wheatfield – A Confrontation, which planted a two-acre field of wheat on a landfill in downtown Manhattan. The field was maintained for four months and ultimately harvested, yielding over 1,000 pounds of healthy, golden wheat.
The most overt formal references to this work in Roksanda’s show today were the organic neutral tailoring palette towards the beginning of the collection and fluffy raffia and tinsel-bedecked dresses that echoed a wheat field gently blowing in the wind. Coupled with Ilinčić’s architectural and sculptural structures, this development across the collection pointed to a similar tension of artifice and organicism, inviting us to question the priorities of urban environments.
The connection between the two artists run more personal as well; both began in a different artistic medium – Ilinčić in architecture, Denes in poetry and painting – before expanding their practices and coming to the medium that would define their careers. And, with Denes from Hungary and Ilinčić from Serbia, both have eastern European heritage – a heritage in which wheat cultivation occupies a deep cultural role.
Beyond the conceptual and personal connections, it’s also always great to see Roksanda’s vibrant and unconventionally beautiful dressmaking skills; the neutral palette and architectural shapes that open the collection eventually bloom into an ecstasy of gathered, draped, knotted, and cascading color – a kind of rebirth.
THE DIRECTION
THE WRAP UP
Despite the brand’s difficult year, Roksanda’s design vision of balancing historical craft moments with an innovative approach to dressing forward-thinking, unconventionally elegant women feels as strong as ever. With a particularly thoughtful point of artistic inspiration, this collection aptly taps into a spirit of growth and renewal.
