Translated by
Rocío ALONSO LOPEZ
Posted on
12 feb. 2023
Goth glamor staged at a dazzling Brooklyn banquet: a sensational show and tremendous Rodarte collection, the first major show of New York Fashion Week, which officially kicked off on Friday.
This fall/winter 2023 collection marked Rodarte’s return to the New York season after the pandemic. The designer duo formed by the sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy did not hesitate to remind the elite of American fashion why they are a cult brand.
The staging took place in the neoclassical building of the Williamsburg Bank, with its double dome, an ideal location for this show, which began with more than a dozen great and sexy looks in black.
“Gothic fairies,” Kate said after this couture-worthy show.
Opening with a quintet of modern Morticia Adams in gorgeous A-line gowns: slip-on necklines, scoop necklines, and finished with floor-skimming tulip sleeves.
The Mulleavys have a brilliant cinematic sense of proportion: they feature gothic reverend mothers in felted charcoal black wool coats, complete with gigantic lapels and Jesuit sleeves. Adding glitter, cutting lace diagonals and finishing with feathers, they create a fantastic celebratory feeling. A “Couture Craft” girl style but worn with elegance, so that the clothes never seemed archaic, but rather crafty.
The entire cast wore white makeup, with black lipstick and silver eyeliner: Portlandian chic.
For the cocktail hour, the daughter, Wednesday Adams, rocked a grand series of mid-calf silk gowns, some with ruffled necklines.
Tori Amos sang Winter as the soundtrack, as the show enlivened with grand gowns, huge trains and models in oversized Regency hats. From a technical point of view, the sisters also took a risk with beaded outfits that seemed very flowing.
The cast paraded under the pilasters and arches of the pew before posing before three tables. Everything decorated as for a wedding, with chandeliers, tiered cakes, scone trays, fruit baskets, all sprinkled with silver glitter, a lovely decoration from the Bureau Betak production house.
In the end, the noir setting suddenly changed with a gorgeous quartet of dresses created from a series of colored pencil drawings by her mother, Victoria Rodart.
“We asked our mother to draw fairies and that’s what she came up with. She’s an artist and our father is a mycologist, a specialist in fungi. And this collection in a way explained us and how we grew up,” smiled Laura.
Transferring that to the canvas, made her mother’s cartoonish fairies in kryptonite colors become hyper-picturesque images, and quite similar to fairies, although always with a gothic touch.
One wondered what her mother had in mind when she sketched the images. “Well, we actually asked her. But she wouldn’t tell us. She still hasn’t seen them,” she admitted.
The sisters began working on the collection in April, but it’s not the first time they’ve played with a gothic theme. However, in this collection it seems that they have advanced to a new level.
So much so, that one can’t help but wonder why no one in Paris has ever invited the Rodarte ladies to take over a haute couture house. Because, indeed, they are California dressmakers, and much better that way.
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