Sharon Wauchob’s second coming began several years ago, but it’s only now, as selected retailers and the kind of woman who relies on no one’s opinion but her own are noticing, that the secret is starting to come out of the bag.
A look through Wauchob’s recent work reveals the designer’s evolutionary approach to design, with each collection building on the preceding one, and the clarity of the designer’s vision. Pajama separates set the tone of “relaxed luxury” (see this season’s gilded navy pair). Lightness and movement are constants, and while there is ornamentation, nothing is superfluous. Fringe, feathers, and crystals are individually hand embroidered using time-tested couture techniques.“I love the feeling that something looks like it is vintage,” the designer noted, “to be perfectly honest it’s actually very hard to recreate.”
The way these clothes move with the body belie the complexity of Wauchob’s patternmaking. For spring, two pieces of elastic transformed a piece of chiffon into a slip-on robe of almost rococo splendor and a rolled-edge finish of infinitesimal delicacy (a width of just .3 millimeters); a voluminous bias-cut asymmetric skirt fell with the lightness of a feather but had an inner layer of support, cut in such a way that the pieces curved into each other like the interior of a conch shell.
Layering is integral to Wauchob’s idea of dressing. What created the peplum effect in the opening look was a bubble jacket (seen alone look 8) exuberantly peeking out under a papery blouson; another way to augment the midline was by slipping on a waist scrunchie (as in look 7).
Silk satins of a sybaritic luxuriousness are another Wauchob standby, and this season they were used for a most audacious pair of tiered pants, with what the designer calld an “extreme silhouette,” that was one part Ginger Rogers and one part flamenco. Wauchob fretted that another smashing pair of trousers, ankle wrapped and ingeniously made without a side seam, were almost “too fashion.” “That’s a thin line for me to keep.,” she said. “My goal is that the design has a simplicity where once I give it to the person, I step away from it and they can find ways of wearing it; that’s what is interesting for me.”
Like many of the collections presented in New York, Wauchob’s was mostly rendered in black and white (augmented with hints of green, whispers of lilac, antique gold), but her work is categorically not minimal—there was no talk of wardrobe dressing here, no perfect cashmere sweater or double-face wool wrap—rather it has a lavish simplicity that can only be achieved through rigor. With her focus solely on producing quality garments collaboratively with skilled artisans and Savile Row tailors (“we really focus certain craftspeople on certain products,” the designer noted), Wauchob has no plans on returning to the runway anytime soon. “Experience doesn’t do any harm,” said this Irish designer, who is working, and winning, on her own terms.
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