John Rocha is about to open an innovative shop in Mayfair, selling fashion, furnishings and art, writes Deirdre McQuillan
When John Rocha opens his new flagship store in Mayfair at the beginning of September, it will be, the designer says, "the final piece in the jigsaw of what I do". Speaking from his holiday home in Cap Ferrat in the south of France, Rocha says people associate him with either fashion, crystal or jewellery, but his new £5 million (€7.4 million) venture in London "will be really about all the things I do put together in one place. It's an investment for the future." Rocha will also use 15a Dover Street as his London headquarters, with the top two floors housing an apartment and an office.
Built in the late 1600s, his new shop is a listed four-storey-over-basement building that was formerly a pub. It will showcase his women's, men's and children's wear collections along with jewellery, crystal, books and art in a setting reflecting his minimalist aesthetic and his cross-pollination of fashion and furnishing. The shop will also display part of his own private art collection which includes works by Picasso and Matisse. In 2005 alone, his company, Three Moon Design, spent more than €500,000 on art. In that sense, the shop will be as much a design and lifestyle statement as a retail space.
"It's not just another clothes shop," says Rocha. "The ground-floor windows are stained glass, so it's an unusual retail space, more like a corner shop. I didn't want to be in a mainstream fashion area and I didn't want a high street fashion shop. What I like about the area is that it is full of art galleries and coffee shops. London is still one of the capitals of the world for fashion and this is about the refocusing of my image, really."
Two doors down from the ultra-trendy Dover Street Market set up by Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo, and a stone's throw from the flagship stores of Paul Smith and Jasper Conran, the location of Rocha's new shop positions it in the premier league of retail venues in fashionable London.
"It will give me a profile in London and be a showcase of how we merchandise," he says. Books will include his favourite ones on art, architecture and interiors so that "people can spend £5 on a book or £500 on a dress." The shop will start trading before its official launch on September 17th during London Fashion Week.
It is 36 years since a young l8-year-old Rocha, one of a family of six, arrived in London from Hong Kong to train as a nurse with £20 in his pocket. In the first of many fortuitous steps that were to change his life, Rocha left to study at Croydon College of Art, and began a career in fashion that ultimately brought him to Ireland. He quickly became known for his fresh approach to traditional Irish materials such as wool, linen and leather.
When his company went into receivership in 1988, it marked a low in his career, but a move to Milan with his wife Odette Gleeson gave him renewed confidence and experience and in 1994, he was named British Designer of the Year. He has never looked back since.
His high-profile association with Waterford began in 1997 with a collection of modern crystal that is now a business worth an estimated £10 million a year (€15 million); this was soon followed by licensing deals with Debenhams, Virgin Airlines and interiors such as the Morrison Hotel, the Beacon Hotel in Sandyford and other upmarket property developments that continue to proliferate.
He is currently working on a new collection of luggage for Tripp, the biggest luggage manufacturer in the UK, and a range of eyewear for Optica that will be launched in Paris in the spring.
Today his fashion and interiors business turns over about €250 million a year, and in 2002 he was awarded a CBE in Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee New Years honours list for his contribution to the fashion industry. In a prescient foretaste of his career more than 20 years ago, his close friend Michael Mortell described Rocha as "very resilient. If by chance the career he's got falls to nothing, he'll embrace an entirely new one. That's an especially eastern ability."
Rocha's approach to both fashion and interiors is characterised by a purity of line and playfulness with texture and materials that draws from both his Irish and Chinese sensibilities.
Now 55 and at the height of his success, he says he is still happiest designing fashion (his new menswear collection is outstanding) and he is sponsoring a bursary for a young designer for Dublin Fashion Week "to give something back to the industry," he says. "Fashion remains closest to my heart. I get genuinely excited by my collections - I never wanted to be a businessman."
Home is still Dublin - his headquarters is a lovely Georgian building in Ely Place. Three Moon Design is in a buoyant creative phase. "We have young people joining us from NCAD and elsewhere in Europe," says Rocha. "There is great spirit in our company at the moment and I love everything I do."