RODARTE: AN AVIAN MIGRATION

The Mulleavey sisters of Rodarte often turn to the outdoors for inspiration. They’ve done tide pools, they’ve done outer space (if you count Star Wars) and this Fashion Week, they drew inspiration from migrating birds.

“It just felt like a natural,” Laura Mulleavy said backstage. “We weren’t thinking of anywhere specific, just birds migrating from one place to another. Maybe leaving the city and going to a place that’s more pastoral.”

The show began with more neutral colours — outdoorsy hues, you might say — and included hearty items like a taupe wool tweed and leather anorak. But the coat came paired with a crystal-embedded skirt, lending it more flash. There were similar juxtapositions elsewhere, for instance a trim blazer topping a pair of lacy trousers that actually looked like shorts with hosiery.

Later in the show, the sisters seemed to set aside the woodsy theme for a series of elaborately sequined, beaded, feathered dresses in electric colours. Was that birds, too? “It all was, in a weird way,” Laura Mulleavy said. “We wanted to use things like sequins and tons of embroidery and feathers and then we were just feeling bolder colours to contrast with the things that were more neutral in the beginning.”

Kate Mulleavy pointed out that in nature itself, there are often startling colour contrasts.

“There’s such an interesting juxtaposition of colours that you wouldn’t imagine,” Kate said.

Often, the sisters take their inspirations from northern California, where they grew up. But this time, they said, the geography wasn’t specific,

“This one could be anywhere,” Laura said.