Soft Boys Rule at Simone Rocha’s Debut Menswear Show

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Ever since her runway debut as part of Fashion East in 2010, Simone Rocha’s collections have been a standout (often the standout) at London Fashion Week season after season. And now, after years of sprinkling menswear into her collections and building up her customer base online and at stores including Bergdorf Goodman and Dover Street Market, Rocha has finally decided to take the plunge, diving headfirst into the menswear market with her first dedicated men’s show in Florence as part of the 110th edition of Pitti Uomo.

The collection opened with a relatively tame menswear offering — a simple black double-breasted suit jacket and matching shorts. Mary Jane ballet flats aside, it was the most traditionally masculine look of the show — the kind of outfit you could imagine a man not yet indoctrinated into the dreamy world of Simone Rocha might look at and say “yeah, I could wear that.”

But that, of course, was just the starting point. Over the course of the show, Rocha’s boys walked the runway in increasingly soft, romantic and, some might say, feminine ensembles, trimmed in lace, draped with boas.

In the age of toxic masculinity and bro culture, this kind of soft boy aesthetic is all but guaranteed to be divisive. But it is also necessary. An antidote and a challenge to the perniciousness of the modern masculine ideal that pits men against women and, indeed, against themselves in an effort to sew discontent and sell supplements. It is a movement built on insecurity and self-loathing by men who would prefer to tear down rather than create. Because creation is hard. Criticism is easy. Pain is easy.

In her collection, Rocha takes those traditional indicators of corporate masculinity — suits, shirts, and Oxford shoes — and dresses them up with lace and bows and sequins, revealing the hidden potential for femininity in even the most staid menswear staples. It’s not something she is putting on these garments. Rather it is innate. If the manosphere gets mad when they look upon these clothes, it is only because they see the truth and beauty in what Rocha is doing and it scares them. Whereas the clients for her menswear are anything but scared. They are brave and romantic and creative and tender and, of course, always extremely well dressed.

Check out the full collection below.