“Disgruntled debutante” was the juicy character Simone Rocha portrayed for spring, yielding a young, frisky and slyly sultry collection.

The designer had read a 1992 essay by Maureen Freely about a young girl who had to wear her mother’s clothes and “wasn’t too happy about it.”

Hence the taciturn expressions and folded arms of the models, who whisked through Mansion House to a wackadoodle-yet-mesmerizing soundtrack stretching from Doris Day ditties to witch house doom and gloom from Salem and White Ring.

They wore sparkly bra tops and gauzy hoop skirts, quilted bed jackets and plastic raincoats, much of this new territory for Rocha, here easing up on ruffles, trailing ribbons and pearl embroideries. Some models hugged leather pillows edged in broderie anglaise.

Volume around the hips h

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