Mixed-Media Magnificence
Review of Roksanda Fall 2025 Fashion Show
By Mark Wittmer
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Sculptural. Playful yet sophisticated. Textural.
Roksanda continues to settle into a strong creative groove, returning to the same location as its show from last season and again drawing inspiration from a woman artist. Rife with texture, tension, and color, Fall 2025 is a vital assertion of the power to render the everyday extraordinary.
Barlow is best known for her monumental work in sculpture, which typically features intricately constructed, intimidatingly scaled forms in a palette of ready-made, everyday materials and almost childlike colors. Roksanda shared a quote from the artist that aptly points to the collection’s spirit of intersecting banality and extravagance: “The every day becomes absurd because it is made out of absurd materials.”
Fittingly, the material palette comes to the fore of the collection. Roksanda’s signature architectural tailoring is crafted in richly textured weaves and paired with cascades of oversized, shimmering paillettes. Dresses are laden with colorful, shaggy fringe that echoes the chaotic joy of Barlow’s mixed-media work.
The series of final looks is a particularly thrilling synthesis of the two artists’ creative worlds. These sculptural dresses feature angularly applied swathes of thick fabric realized in shapes that echo both Barlow’s sculptural paintings and the cast-off fabric cuttings we might expect to see on a studio floor, but transmuted into a larger-than-human scale. Sculpturally enveloping the body, these complex, asymmetrical, beautifully moving silhouettes feel like a living manifesto of the collection’s call to rethink where we look for beauty and what is worth preserving and celebrating.
THE DIRECTION
THE WRAP UP
Last season was the first since the brand narrowly avoided going into administration and found a new owner, with designer Roksanda Ilinčić pivoting from owner to focus solely on her role as creative director. The move is proving have been a smart one; not only do we get to continue to enjoy the designer’s distinctive and vital vision of a new take on artful womanhood, but the two collections since the change have been some of her best.
