Sisters are doing it for themselves

A LACK of formal training and isolation from fashion capitals hasn't stopped Pasadena's Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte

THE story of fashion label Rodarte is, in the fashion universe at least, the stuff of legend.

Sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, who grew up in Pasadena and attended the University of California at Berkeley (Kate studied art history, Laura studied literature, neither has any formal fashion training) designed their first collection on their parents' kitchen table in late 2004. It consisted of just seven dresses and three coats.

They sent miniature versions of the dresses on dolls made from paper to the influential fashion retailer Cameron Silver of Decades in Los Angeles (see our story on Silver on page 42). Silver was blown away and immediately got on the phone to buyers and editors in New York. Within weeks, the dresses were on the cover of Women's Wear Daily. Not long after that, Vogue's Anna Wintour turned up in LA for a viewing and told the Mulleavys that what they were doing with fashion was very personal and that they should keep it that way.

"I think that was the best advice we ever received from anyone," Laura tells WISH. Since then it's been nothing but accolades for the design duo. Karl Lagerfeld bought pieces of an early collection they did for the Paris boutique Colette; they won back-to-back Council of Fashion Designers of America awards; Michelle Obama became a fan; they designed costumes for the hit film Black Swan and its star, Natalie Portman, wore a gown by Rodarte to the Oscars to collect her Best Actress award.

Their clothes have also been acquired by major art institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they have been the subject of a solo exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York and, among their other achievements, the pair has designed a budget collection for Target.

"When people ask me what the most exciting thing is that's happened to us in our job I would have to say it's having something we made purchased by the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum," says Laura. "It was a piece that I felt very strongly about but I didn't quite know why. So to have it selected by an institution like that really helped me to define what we were doing as designers. It's the biggest deal that could happen to us."

When the Los Angeles County Museum of Art mounted an exhibition of Rodarte's costumes from Black Swan, people queued around the block to see them. "There does seem to be a growing interest in fashion in general from museums," says Laura. "And when you see these things in real life they look a lot different than they do in a photograph. I can't tell you how many times people have said to me that they had no idea our clothes looked like this after seeing them in the flesh."

The Mulleavys say that what defines their clothes is the texture of the fabrics and how they are put together. "And that doesn't neccessarily translate in a photograph," says Laura.

In May, the Los Angeles Philharmonic will stage a production of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni at the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall with the sets designed by Gehry himself. When it came to choosing a designer for the costumes, Gehry called Anna Wintour for a recommendation (as you do), and she suggested the Mulleavys. "They've shown they can create fashion magic on the runway and the movie screen ... they are also the perfect choice to design for the opera," Wintour told Vanity Fair recently.

While Rodarte (the name is their mother's maiden name and is pronounced Ro-dar-tay) now has a studio space in Los Angeles, the sisters still live with their parents in Pasadena. Kate, pictured above on the left, is 33 and Laura 31, but they behave more like identical twins. For this last-minute interview only Laura was available but she says, "We both give the same answers anyway." The design process is very much a team effort, she adds, and the only roles they divide is that she is the driver and Kate, the art history major, is the one who does the final design sketches.

"We answer each other's thoughts and one of us might have an idea and then the other one completes it. We have a rapport and it kind of makes designing more complicated, in a good way, or more interesting."

Laura says their California upbringing always influences and informs their collections in one way or another but it's not always obvious. "We did a collection about Van Gogh once and it was really because of an exhibition we saw at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena," she says. "But at this point in our career, I don't think you can take California away from what we do. I feel our connection to California is always influencing what we do in some way."

rodarte.net