RARE BIRDS
Outsiders in the fashion world, the sisters behind American label Rodarte continue to galvanise the industry.
Outsiders in the fashion world, the sisters behind American label Rodarte continue to galvanise the industry.
During fashion month, each host city has a character. London is the freshly-unboxed-from-graduate-school new cool, Milan is the old Italian guard spiked with subversive wit, and Paris is where the powerhouses show, and trends are solidified. As for New York, which kicks off the entire show schedule, it’s the commercial one, where retail buyers head to for pumped-up contemporary sportswear, the sort of clothes you would rely on for workwear habituals. To put it nicely, New York fashion week is about the wearability of fashion rather than experimental vigour.
Except for perhaps Rodarte – the three-syllable designer label by sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, who named it after Spanish-ising their mother’s maiden name. Their shows are the apex of New York fashion week, a coveted ticket to see the pair’s wayward references, their moody depictions of the raw savageness in beauty by way of intricate layers with a heavy touch of the hand. You don’t go to New York fashion week and not see Rodarte.
Their career began when they sent off handmade paper dolls dressed in their designs to fashion editors from their home in California’s Pasadena where they are still based. Neither had studied or worked in fashion before – Kate studied art history and Laura English literature. Away from the fashion capitals of fashion, two outsider geniuses concocted a label that has gone on to become one of the most memorable and intriguing American brands in recent times. It makes for quite a story. Their isolated geographic base is used sometimes to explain their unseen, wholly original way at approaching fashion that is apart from what else is shown on the runway. Kate tells me how they would get asked when they were moving from California. “We got asked that for five years!” she says with a laugh. “Us living in California is part of who we are and it comes out on the clothes. I think it had more to do with us fitting into a certain idea of something. We never fitted in.” She blames the internet for the public’s eased view of their geographic locations – but it could also be because of time, and their growth as designers as among the most exciting and intriguing in fashion today. No-one’s asking if they’re leaving California now.
Leading up to the show week, the designers stay quiet on their plans, revealing nothing to the press. “We are very internal when we create,” Kate says. “We don’t talk to anyone when we’re
working on a collection, we don’t tell our parents.” When the collections have been shown, they are welcoming and open, at pains to express their design process. They may be depicted as outsiders, but their opinions show that they know much more than what they may let on. Their friends include Kirsten Dunst, Tavi Gevinson, Dakota Fanning, Emma Watson and Natalie Portman – the cool, smart girls in the room (of this fictive, metaphoric high school, which is definitely not your run of the mill.) In fact, the designers are directing a film due out next year, entitled Woodshock, with Dunst as the main actress.
One season might cite the idea of Australiana (as in autumn/ winter ’12/’13), another, Van Gogh mixed in with California’s Mount Wilson (see spring/ summer ’12). Not in that hackneyed way that other designers do it – their latest collection, autumn/winter ’16/’17 claimed origins in San Francisco’s hippie heritage inspired by a trip back to their alma mater Berkeley, but it stayed far away from flower power. Instead it explored a mystical, dream-like state of the mere idea of San Francisco, translated visually into dark-lip-stained models with orchids knotted in their hair and subtle wave motifs appearing in the form of sequins and frills lopping around the form. “I have to say that the collections that are most representative of us as designers are based on more of an abstract feeling and we just pull from a more unconscious place, it’s more about emotions,” Kate says.
The collection marked a decade for Rodarte in the fashion industry. The label sets itself apart for prioritising the “integrity of the collection, the idea, the creativity”, as Laura puts it. “Pushing all of our limits as much as we can to try to make an idea come across.”
Many have questioned the commerciality of Rodarte. Would they be questioned about their business viability so much if they weren’t based in the US? “Commerciality is such a huge part of fashion and it’s a great part [because] it keeps the business growing and thriving … but as a community, we shouldn’t be afraid of having artistic souls who want to do it for those reasons. The commercial aspects are important but so are the artistic aspects,” Kate says.
Both Kate and Laura are selective of what they wear from their own designs, preferring to keep their personal styles separate. Unlike other female designers, the Rodarte models are not Mulleavy facsimiles, allowing them to be completely unharnessed and free in their pursuit of inventiveness in fashion. “We’re very Californian, very laidback. We make these things that are so connected to who we are but I don’t connect to it [in a way] so that I need to wear it,” Kate says. They would prefer to not be bound by their own tastes of what they like to wear themselves. “I don’t design for us. For me, it’s about complete creatively what I want to make. It’s nice to work from a blank canvas.”
Wide-ranging influences in their designs aside, the process of their work can be compared to haute couture. As it’s been told, Alexander McQueen had once caught sight of their designs at a Met Museum exhibition and gasped – later praising the sisters for their work. “It starts with sketching and it’s very meticulous. Things evolve with draping – we have an idea, but you have to follow your ideas when you’re draping,” Kate says. Many of their designs are made as one-offs. “The way production works is it goes into the store when someone wants to buy it,” explains Kate. “I love the idea that fashion is aspirational and special. For me, it feels like it’s part of our thread to make things that feel special and hopefully when someone gets it, it’s special for them.” They have made dresses for “one, sometimes two or three” people in the world. “Luxury is about dreams and ideas, and they don’t happen as fast as fast fashion,” Laura says.
Collections have had them executing atypical techniques on fabrics: sandpapering and burning among them. Regular Rodarte model Kia Low remembers being backstage with extra sand being applied to her finale dress. “It was handbeaded and had netting and sand that you would find on the beach – it was a real-life mermaid dress,” she says. “The sisters are super relaxed. They definitely have the most relaxed vibe backstage.”
There’s a complex femininity in their designs, especially as of late – their past few collections have developed upon each other with motifs of layered lace and sequins. “I think we are at home when we do that,” says Kate. “But I don’t think this is feminine, that’s just a social construct. From an intellectual point of view, I like to think outside that … But, yeah, there is a femininity and a romance to it. For a woman designer, it’s interesting to embrace softness and femininity and still produce a powerful collection.” The dresses of the autumn/winter ’16/’17 collection are spun from lace appliquéd with sequin flowers, leather piping alongside ruffles of embroidered sheer fabric, fine fabrics layered and draped across the body in crimson and black. “If you hold up the dresses they are like little sculptures but they are still soft-looking. When you look at it, it’s constructed and layered, but to me, it’s like doing a deconstructed dress. Creating something soft and ethereal but all the work that goes into it, it’s like an architecture.” The women who buy the Rodarte dress aren’t buying it because it’s just another lace dress, or another sequinned piece to wear out. For that purpose, there are many others to choose from. It’s within that Rodarte dress that the Mulleavy sisters weave their tales and dreams, bestowing upon you entry into their enchanted world.