Bal Harbour

BAL HARBOUR 167 MACABRE AND OCCULT DETAILS surface throughout fashion designer Roland Mouret's new monograph, Roland Mouret: Provoke, Attract, Seduce. As a boy in his father's butcher shop, near the pilgrimage town of Lourdes, France, he would submerge his hands in the buckets of blood, entranced by the way it would coat his arms like a pair of red opera gloves. The opening chapter, in fact, is called "Blood Bones and Fat." In it he describes learning his father's trade—carving meat, trimming fat—and the way that intimate knowledge of yiÃyÕiViÃÃÜÀ>Ã>`iÃ}iÀ°ÃiÜiÀii says that his favorite number is 13. Another spread is devoted to a black-and-white photocopy of his hands, annotated with a palm reading. There are also more personal dark shadows. The book, which grants readers access to Mouret's inner world, is formatted as a series of interviews conducted by award-winning fashion journalist Alexander Fury. In those conversations, Mouret discusses his fraught relationship with his father and his feelings of being trapped by convention. "There are a lot of personal things in the book, about my family and myself when I was young," says Mouret by phone from London, where he's lived and worked since the 1990s. Curiously, though, the lauded designer's clothes >ÀiVw`iÌ]Õ«Li>Ì>`vÌiL`ÞVÀ>ÌV° There's not a whiff of spidery goth girl or angsty grunge waif. Like the best spells, Mouret's magic is invisible yet completely transformational. Take his most famous creation: the Galaxy dress. The opening look from his fall 2005 runway show, it became an instant red-carpet favorite, worn that season by Victoria Beckham, Cameron Diaz and Naomi Watts. Since then, it's evolved into a beloved classic, spotted on the likes of Miranda Kerr, Dita Von Teese, Halle Berry, Scarlett Johansson and the queen herself—Beyoncé. Inspired by the glamour of Paris in the 1940s, the body- con silhouette is enhanced by an interior belt. "I have a friend who is a drag queen, and he pulls on a belt with his costumes," Mouret recounts in the book. "So I pinched the dress in one inch at the waist, with a tape inside, to give it that look." It's far from his only trick. He's known as a master of draping—molding fabric around the body with tucks and folds rather than cuts and seams. Largely self- taught, Mouret developed his own technique, which has become his signature. Throughout Provoke, Attract, Seduce, new photographs taken expressly for the book by Mouret's longtime friend and collaborator Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou illustrate his deft and original approach to design. Roland Mouret views his designs as tools to empower the women that wear them— tailored suits and coats from 2013 and 2017 collections put a bold and feminine spin on the menswear-inspired powersuit. COURTESY OF ROLAND MOURET, PHOTOS BY ALESSIO BOLZONI

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