Simone Rocha remembers the first time she ever saw Louise Bourgeois’s artwork. She was a student visiting the Irish Museum of Modern Art and had entered a gallery that featured large-scale abstract bodies made of nude terry cloth that hung from the ceiling. As Rocha says, “I was in my first year of art college at the time, and I had grown so used to seeing textiles being used solely for garments, but I was so moved by the fact that these textiles had become their own forms. It was really poetic.” Rocha was entranced – not least of all by how fiercely unapologetic Bourgeois was about her work and its themes of sexuality and the body. She once told the press: “I do not owe the why to anybody. Any body.”
Rocha used this quote on the show notes for her autumn/winter 2019 collection, which was a sort of love letter to Bourgeois and to Rocha’s own instinctual aesthetic, both of which are testament to the fact that power and strength can still arise from delicate, feminine beauty. Rocha also had the opportunity to work with the Louise Bourgeois Foundation on the season’s embroideries and prints.
On May 1, Rocha released another ode to “LB,” as she referred to her over the phone from London. The designer worked alongside the art gallery Hauser & Wirth, known for championing women artists like Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and Roni Horn, to create two pairs of earrings based on two of Bourgeois’s sculptures: Spiral Woman (2003) and Untitled (1995). Designed with 24-karat gold-plated sterling silver, the shapes mimic those of Bourgeois’s hanging fabric sculptures. Each style has been produced in an edition of 250 and will be available online at Hauser & Wirth, in Simone Rocha stores, and starting May 16, at Dover Street Market.
“I really thought about how I could interpret her discipline into my discipline,” Rocha says of the design process. “I immediately thought of the hanging sculptures and an earring, which is quite signature to me, I think. They are sympathetic to her work without just being interpretations.” Because much of Bourgeois’s art focuses on women and their connection to themselves, Rocha felt that now, amidst the #MeToo movement, was the right time to really hone in on her “inspirational connection” to the artist.
“This season was all about showing her work and this idea of femininity shown on a cast of very different women,” Rocha notes. “We didn’t have to explain it to anybody; it was just so obvious that all of these women looked like the best versions of themselves. It was about me being unapologetic about my work.” It was also about giving props to the woman who has driven much of Rocha’s empowering creative sensibility over the years. “Not in a million years, as a teenager, did I think I would be producing a collaboration with [the foundation of] one of my absolute idols.”
This article was originally published on Vogue.com
