The new face in fashion

But Rochas doesn’t have camellias like Chanel or Surrealism like Schiaparelli. Instead, there are ribbons and lace, and elusive concepts like romanticism and youthfulness.

Twenty-five years old, ambitious, and with a sensitivity to primary colours and dramatic proportions, de Vilmorin was hired with the task of restoring the sense of youthful, soigné sensibility that originated with Marcel Rochas and bringing a new meaning to the historic house. With a focus on the everyday, his work is dramatic and poetic with a twist of extravagance, without being outré and always remaining precise and consistent.

Over the years, Rochas has had a number of different owners, each with a similar desire to give its fashion arm a new meaning. In most cases, the outcome has been like flying without wings.

Remarkably, Rochas’ longest standing creative director in the last 30 years was Irish. In 1989, designer Peter O’Brien took charge, and he spent 12 years carving out his vision for the house. It was whimsical, a tenure defined by luscious fabric juxtapositions like silk chiffon, chantilly lace, and volumised proportions in opera coats and corseted evening wear, and prohibitively expensive techniques that were often impossible to produce — they were considered ready-to-wear, but often bordered on haute couture in their painstakingly-detailed approach to craftsmanship.

His catwalks routinely featured supermodels like Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigova, and Yasmin Le Bon.

In addition to looking after womenswear and accessories, O’Brien oversaw menswear, fragrances, and licencing deals for the brand.

In 1996, at a fashion show at Hotel Costes, O’Brien immortalised the Irish imprint on Rochas with a collection called ‘Saint Patrick’s Day.’ A précis accompanying the show included ‘He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ by W.B. Yeats, while a traditional Irish folk band provided the music. Around that same time, he attired the French Rose for the Rose of Tralee pageant. Few other Irish designers have scaled the ranks as the premier designers at Parisian fashion houses.

O’Brien left Rochas in 2001 but if one is to peruse his Instagram he remembers it fondly. His departure was followed by a string of short-lived stints from various designers (Olivier Theyskens, Marco Zanini, and Alessandro dell’Acqua) who failed to capture commercial success despite having the fashion press swooning. How will de Vilmorin fare?

“There is a strong synergy between the values that define Charles’ work and the legacy of the Maison Rochas – audacity, romanticism and elegance. His perspective and creativity have brought freshness, and a touch of fierceness, to the Rochas story,” says Philippe Benacin, the CEO of Interparfums, which purchased Rochas from Procter & Gamble in 2015.

On the day Interparfums announced de Vilmorin as creative director at Rochas, they appointed High Italian Manufacturing, or HIM, as the licencing partner for the womenswear line. Fabio Ducci, the co-CEO of HIM, enthused about de Vilmorin ushering the storied maison into a new chapter. “It was clear from the beginning that his arrival would be a real shift, and it was what we felt we needed. [He] has injected new energy and grown our community without compromising the values at the core of the brand’s DNA.”

De Vilmorin has his own history with Rochas. His grandfather’s great-aunt Louise de Vilmorin, a socialite, was a close friend of Marcel Rochas’ wife Hélène. Although he was a toddler during its recent formative fashion years, de Vilmorin remembers his own grandmother wearing the fragrances. But his gambit is different to some of his predecessors, including Ireland’s own O’Brien.

“I really want to show a different side to the brand, one that is fresh and younger, so it’s important for me to imagine a new character and a new story. I respect the past but I want to create something new,” he tells me on a Friday night during Paris Fashion Week.

We convene at Ruc, an upscale brasserie by the Louvre, a few minutes after 8pm. The dining room is abuzz with chatter and clinking wine glasses. He orders a pint of Leffe.

During our time together, we discuss the other shows taking place during Paris Fashion Week, like Loewe and Balenciaga, and review the Victoria Beckham show as the first looks come through on Instagram. De Vilmorin is a fashion obsessive. He lists Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Viktor & Rolf, as his influences, and their impression is deeply felt in his work which favours theatrical flourishes.

Affable if a tad shy, de Vilmorin’s English sometimes falters and defers to his PR, perched alongside us, for assistance. In other instances, he switches halfway through sentences to French — mostly comprehensible to functional users — or litters his speech with franglais. For someone whose artistry is so beholden to extravagance, he is plain-spoken and plainly dressed in a black Comme des Garçons Shirt t-shirt, black jeans, and a vintage leather jacket. Tall and slender, his waif-like features are framed by thick glasses — he could be mistaken for a Gucci model.

The 25-year-old lives in Batignolles in Paris, with his Italian greyhound Terreur. Every two weeks, he travels to Milan to the Rochas headquarters. When he’s in Paris, he works on his eponymous label, which specialises in handcrafted haute couture, which de Vilmorin labours over on the floor of his apartment.

Like any 25-year-old, he is a fixture on the social scene, spending much of his spare time with his friends or at parties and fashion shows. He says, “I’m very much the same person when I’m working and when I’m not.”

One of his friends, Victor Weinsanto, attests to this. Another fashion design star on the rise, he was introduced to de Vilmorin when they were both students. Over the years, the pair have become much closer, matching their upward trajectory. (De Vilmorin modelled at Weinsanto’s spring/summer 2023 show just days before his Rochas presentation. “It’s fun to do things like that,” he says.)

“There’s an honesty in his work and how he acts with people, he’s very humble. To make it in this industry, to deal with the pressure, you need ego. He has that but, in front of that ego, there is humility: he knows how lucky he is, he knows that he is working hard, and nothing is ever finished. He’s the same Charles as he was three years ago,” says Weinsanto.

A few days prior to our meeting, de Vilmorin took a bow in the vestibule of the Folies Bergères, a mythical cabaret theatre, at his spring/summer 2023 show for Rochas. Ella Emhoff, the step-daughter of Vice President Kamala Harris, opened the show in a cotton pinstripe shirt which is cinched at the waist with a leather corset before exploding into a ruffled skirt. (“She is the [type of] woman that I want to dress,” he reflects.)

His runway was replete with impossibly soft and supple knits with lurex stripes — a stark contrast to the normally scratchy fabric. Wet cotton gave the illusion of hammered silk, and denim a street-style flair, imbuing the collection with a sense of grounded reality.

His knack for the playful, something best seen at his namesake label, where his creativity runs amok, imparts a knowing frivolity that is juxtaposed with much of the hardened, po-faced fashion of late. Matisse-inspired illustrations decorate billowing chiffon gowns. Ruffles cascade along the silhouette of the body. The colour palette is simultaneously explosive and quiet.

De Vilmorin is familiar with the history of the house and its time under O’Brien. However, as he paves the way forward, he doesn’t see right now as the time to look to the past. “I will go back into the archives and take inspiration but this collection is all me. I need to create a new identity for Rochas.”

Hemlines are shorter, silhouettes are less rarified and more exuberant, and, for all his talk about capturing a youthful frisson, there is still ample sophistication in the form of light tailoring.

“He is very humble in his approach. He’s trying to shape an identity at Rochas by giving it soul which is challenging when the brand doesn’t have a signature to latch onto. Rochas is a house that’s still in the making,” says Serge Carreira, Head of Emerging Brands Initiative at the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (the governing body that presides over Paris Fashion Week).

Agendas and aesthetics aside, it is abundantly clear that de Vilmorin is achieving what he sets out to do. He is motivated to cultivate an aura around Rochas that resembles recent revivals at houses like Schiaparelli and Courrèges. Fashion loves harking back to the past as much as it loves discussing the future.

The watchful eyes of corporate structures and the fickle fashion press in a gruelling industry is a tricky terrain to navigate, especially in the case of meeting the commercial demands of a house like Rochas, with its contingent of clients in Italy, the US, and South Korea. “Everyone is dreaming of these things —the image of being a young designer talent but it’s also the hardest moment. You have to keep up the good press, you have to keep up the sales. But also it’s the most exciting,” says Weinsanto.

It’s not lost on de Vilmorin. He’s already planning his next collection, which will take months of preparation before it’s completed. He will travel to South Korea to visit the stores and clients there. In the meantime, he’s balancing Rochas with his namesake label, and, let’s face it, being a 25-year-old. He smirks, “it’s challenging, but I love a challenge.”