There’s a heat wave sweeping Los Angeles right now, but that was not the inspiration for Rodarte’s spring collection—despite the presence of a big, bold sun in their lookbook images. “It’s an ode to California golden hour,” said Laura Mulleavy on a phone call. “Yes, it was all pretty organic; all the wildlife and the desert blooms. Things that really tend to have a huge influence on us texturally,” added Kate Mulleavy.
Lace played a starring role in the collection; not only because the fabric made up many of the looks, but because it was the lace itself that guided their final silhouettes. “Usually we get fabrics and we spend so much time thinking about how to mold them into what we want to do,” said Kate. “A lot of the time it’s almost like trying to defy gravity, because you really want to use a fabric in a certain way and it pushes you into the outer limits in terms of what’s possible.” Laura continued, “We went through a couple of rounds of sketches for the laces because we were so inspired by it, and then we realized that you couldn’t just see what was beautiful about the lace itself. It’s nice to just look at what this fabric wants to be.” “We just had to let it all go,” added Kate.
Dresses were clean, with barely any visible seams or darts. There was indeed a sense of covering a body with fabric and building a dress on the spot; like the white dress that opens the lookbook, with its simple off the shoulder construction and extra-long stand-alone lace sleeves; or the look that followed it, a straight-cut strapless black lace top worn with swooshy asymmetrical skirt. Another dress mixed a geometric lace pattern that alluded to traditionally Southwestern patterns with another lace that mimicked a floral lace skirt that appeared to be almost crochet. Its construction was slightly more complex than the previous dresses, but the focus remained on the lace.
That same feeling was present in the metallic linen used on a pair of dresses with slight leg-o-mutton sleeves and little collars in sunset shades of pink and yellow; and another shrunken tailored jacket and mermaid skirt in gold. They were all transformed under the light, taking on the appearance of shiny PVC or molten metal. “We were really thinking about textures that could feel natural; it really reminded me of that glistening light,” added Laura.
Within this interest in the natural, there was also an impulse to bring together unexpected textures for some of the collection’s best pieces—a black cotton eyelet dress embroidered with white sequins; or a delicate black silk embroidered dress punctuated by white crochet-esque cotton insets for a very bird-like result.
“The starting point was lace and things like the metallic linen: it feels like there was a real organic quality to the work, things that are actually rooted in a kind of connectivity to nature, but at the same time they feel modern,” said Laura. Kate added, “I think a lot of times when we think about ‘modern,’ it’s always about how we’re going to dress in the future, like a kind of tech version of something. And I feel like this was the opposite in terms of inspiration, but the result was something very, very new.”
