Designer Roksanda Ilincic is “about to get catapulted to the next level,” says Jeffrey Kalinsky, founder of the Jeffrey boutique chain and the designer fashion director at Nordstrom.
Serbian-born Ilincic, who shows the latest collection from her Roksanda line at London Fashion Week today, has become a favorite of high-profile women, most notably former U.K. First Lady Samantha Cameron and former and current U.S. first ladies Michelle Obama and Melania Trump.
Despite her line’s popularity among the business and political elite, it offers an alternative to the attire most associated with those realms. Launched in 2005, it embraces “voluminous, unabashedly feminine shapes, unexpected color combinations and idiosyncratic block prints,” according to this profile in the New York Times.
It’s no surprise then that Ilincic dismisses the “power dressing” label that’s often attached to her designs. The term “has all the wrong connotations; all ’80s shoulder pads and forced uncomfortable shapes,” she says. “It suggests a type of dressing where women are not able to be their authentic selves. In fact, they try very deliberately not to be themselves. And that is the antithesis of what my brand is all about.”
It’s certainly time to retire the stiff, buttoned-up aesthetic that “power dressing” currently conjures up, especially now that female leaders like U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May have proven that an interest in fashion is reconcilable with an interest in, say, public policy and that wielding as much power as a man doesn’t mean you necessarily have to dress like one.
The “power dressing” term deserves a new meaning. In describing how she wants her clients to feel, Ilincic has a suggestion: genuine and self-assured.