Can’t Afford A Couture Dress? Rodarte Has The Answer

As the Rodarte collection pictures are hitting the internet, Kate and Laura Mulleavy are driving down a Los Angeles freeway veiled in the dark clouds of wildfires. “There’s no sunlight coming through. It should be 100 degrees but it’s 70. It’s so weird,” Laura says. Ten days after the fires started blazing through the Californian hills, they are now just 13 miles from the Mulleavy house. “We don’t know what will happen, but we’re far enough away from the foothill that we seem to be okay. They’re the worst fires you’ve ever seen. We get them really bad, but this is pretty intense.”

Before the fires, the Los Angeles-based designer duo had taken to those hills – albeit a different area to where the fires broke out – to shoot their spring/summer 2021 look book. They spent the lockdown period hiking there, embracing the Californian nature they’ve always loved, and reflecting on the brand they founded in 2005. “We were thinking about what Rodarte is, and about making a collection that would touch on the things that we are consistently inspired by: the ethos of the brand,” Laura says. “It’s a story of us.”

Shot serenely in the Los Angeles hillsides, the collection is a genepool of the components that have to come to define the brand, and earned the Mulleavy sisters their loyal following. “You have time to reflect on your own path and the language you create. This collection is a step forward towards really defining the brand in a strong way,” Kate says. “There’s a romanticism to what we do and an innovation within that: a subversive element. Our hand is in flou and in silhouettes that can be voluminous with a soft hand rather than a hard hand,” Laura says.

In its 15-year lifespan, Rodarte has developed an haute couture sensibility, which culminated in a slot on the Paris couture schedule in 2018, but refuses formal definition. Illustrated in the meeting between tracksuits and evening dresses, the Mulleavy sisters’ new collection epitomises their constant balance struck between traditional wardrobe poles; both directions, however, created with intricacy and integrity.

“For Rodarte, the idea of couture should translate into everything from a blouse to a floor-length dress. It’s also about understanding how couture can evolve: How can things be special for people who can’t buy a couture dress? I don’t want to be part of a culture of consumption where things are worn and thrown out. As designers, we all need to be invested in that. The challenge in our time is: How can you make beautiful clothes that make people dream, but which can also be versatile?” Laura says. “The sensibility of couture is that things are timeless, and that’s how we always approach a collection.”