Simone Rocha's Wellie Boots and Gingham for Spring: "It Was Almost Like Coming Home."

Simone Rocha's Wellie Boots and Gingham for Spring: "It Was Almost Like Coming Home."

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When Simone Rocha presented her current fall collection six months ago during the last London Fashion Week, she was very honest with everyone about where her head was at. She had just had her first baby, she was very emotional, and that came through in the collection-and in how she spoke about it.

"I need rest." Those very words were part of her official statement about a collection full of couture-torn dresses whose vulnerable quality belied a toughness and richly constructed center.

All images by Portia Hunt

But this season, Simone is wholly her own woman again. "It's almost like coming home," she told us backstage after her Saturday afternoon show inside the gorgeous Southwark Cathedral. She is herself again, she said, and back to tailoring, wild asymmetry, heart-stopping florals, her Irish heritage, and... the farm life.

Inspired by Jackie Nickerson's Farm, a 2002 photography tome that documents women in agricultural communities throughout Africa-Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe- Simone went rural. It's not so much a departure as it is a return, both literal and figurative. Another important reference was the bucolic and brutal work of Ireland's Paul Henry; specifically, a piece from 1912 called The Potato Diggers.

With red gingham, milkmaid eyelet, patchwork, rubber boots, garden gloves and trench coats, she offered a uniform for the most delicate hard work.

In Nickerson's photographs she found women wearing plastic aprons and was struck by that necessity, and the opportunity. She wondered how to take that very specific sort of utilitarian workwear and make it beautiful.

Her solution: treat it like broderie anglaise; render the all-weather, easy-clean material like fine linen. Give it a flourish, a historical, decorative flair. Pairing this with cotton poplin, chiffon, crêpe de Chine, tulle and knits, she achieved her desired mix of "synthetic with very earthy."

"Everything was cross-pollinating," she said. "Not just with the fabrics themselves but in the looks. There's a feeling of practicality that I wanted to put into the show."

Her adoring clients will enjoy putting that utility into their everyday.

It isn't just a concept, after all, these clothes are meant to be worn-in her adopted home in London as well as in her native country and far beyond. "We're Irish, we're very used to rain," she joked of the prettily slicker-like dresses and knee-high rubber boots. You will still need an umbrella, of course, but what you're protecting will be all the more beautiful.

One reporter backstage called the collection "Celtic-core" -a way of interfacing with old-world culture while keeping one's feet firmly planted in the global essence of now. And that feels about right. It feels really, really right.

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-Laura Cassidy

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