Last May, as Simone Rocha was beginning to conceptualize her Spring 2027 collection, which walked the runway less than two weeks ago during London Fashion Week, Justin Peck, resident choreographer at the New York City Ballet, reached out. He said he was working on a new piece, one that would debut at the company’s annual Fall Fashion Gala—and he wanted her to do the costumes. “It was something that I straight away thought I would absolutely love to do,” she recalled on the phone ahead of Thursday’s performance. That meant in tandem with show prep, Rocha was fielding calls from NYCB’s director of costumes Marc Happel.
That Rocha should make ballet costumes seems like a no-brainer. The London-based designer has attracted a loyal following with her sophisticated take on girlish ideas. She’s made a signature out of ribbons and rosettes, which she adheres to everything from taffeta skirts to utilitarian anoraks. But for Peck’s new pas de deux, titled Mirror/Sky, she pared things back.
Dancers Tiler Peck and Roman Mejia wore nude, second-skin leotards, adorned with hand-painted red roses—two down the front of Peck’s leotard and a budding stem across Mejia’s. “I knew the dance was going to be very physical. I knew it was going to be very pure and distilled,” she said. “And I really wanted the costumes to reflect that.” The details were special: She edged the neckline and sleeves with little strips of lace, like what you would find on a camisole. Down the back of Peck’s leotard ran corset-style lacing that finished in a bow. And instead of the obvious tutu, tulle burst from the leg line of Peck’s leotard—just “a nod to the classic narrative of ballet.”
Rocha’s Spring 2027 collection evoked a similar effect. “I was already in this headspace of looking for the less obvious,” she said. On the runway, she opted to minimize her froufrou; for the stage, she had to. “I’m a very greedy designer,” she says. “I work a lot in volume. I love to work with embellishment. But a lot of that had to be stripped away and distilled because of the movement,” she said. “I had to give over to the process, which I really loved doing.”
Somehow Rocha had never created official ballet costumes before. “I’ve always been very inspired by dance and movement, and throughout the years it’s influenced different collections,” she says, “but it’s great to work with it with genuine authenticity.” It was lovely to see her crossover to this realm she’s pulled so much from—and to do so in an unexpected way.
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