Roksanda Ilinčić was born in Belgrade in 1975 and travelled widely as a child with her parents; her father, Lazar, was a businessman and her mother, Ranka, worked in public relations.
She studied architecture and design at the Faculty of Applied Arts of the University of Arts in Belgrade before moving to London in 1999 to take a master's in womenswear at Central Saint Martins. She launched her label, Roksanda, at London Fashion Week in 2005, and has shown on the London schedule ever since, later adding leather goods to her ready-to-wear.
Her first store opened in June 2014 at 9 Mount Street in Mayfair, designed in collaboration with the architect David Adjaye, a fitting partner for a designer whose own training began in architecture.
Her first London show, in 2005, numbered only twelve or fourteen pieces, "all that I could afford to make", presented in the manner of a 1950s Paris couture salon, with models walking among the tables. Her architectural training has stayed visible in sculptural silhouettes and blocks of saturated colour, and her collections have often taken artists as their starting point, among them Lee Krasner, Josef and Anni Albers and Phyllida Barlow. For Autumn/Winter 2025, staged on the sixteenth floor of an empty brutalist office block, she echoed Barlow's precarious sculptures with upended raffia, reversed fur and final pieces cut from felt left over from earlier collections. "I love the way she created worlds out of discarded material," she told the Guardian.
The business has had difficult moments. After taking minority investment in 2014, the label faced the turmoil that followed the collapse of the retailer MatchesFashion, and in May 2024, after filing a notice of intent to appoint administrators, it was sold to The Brand Group, a brand management and licensing company based in Hong Kong and London. Ilinčić stayed on as the label's creative director. In September 2025 she marked twenty years with a Spring 2026 collection inspired by Barbara Hepworth's pierced forms, reviving archive silhouettes such as the bell-sleeved Margot dress of 2012. "I'm just really grateful that I'm still here," she told British Vogue, reflecting on a front row that now included "people ... that were literally my icons, like Vanessa Redgrave or Marina Abramovic".
The label has been worn by Catherine, Princess of Wales, Michelle Obama, Samantha Cameron, Princess Rajwa of Jordan, Cate Blanchett, Emily Blunt, Kristen Stewart, Amy Adams and Keira Knightley. Her designs have been exhibited at the Design Museum in Women Fashion Power and in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Ballgowns: British Glamour Since 1950.
Her honours include the Red Carpet Award at the British Fashion Awards (2012), Red Carpet Designer at the Elle Style Awards (2013), Business Woman of the Year at the Harper's Bazaar UK Women of the Year Awards (2014) and British Designer of the Year at the Elle Style Awards (2016). She was appointed MBE in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to fashion design.
She lives in north London with her husband and daughter.