Maybe it's due to the recent announcements regarding the changes in the structures of catwalk shows, but this season New York Fashion Week has been a redundant and somewhat useless event with very little content.
Take Rodarte's catwalk show: their supporters and followers, especially the American press, keep on using magniloquent words when they describe the Mulleavy sisters' collections. According to them they are a sort of cult to be followed, witches casting a charming spell on the runway, they are storytellers with a spellbinding talent for telling stories and evoking secret and unspeakable dreams.
Skeptical critics take instead distance from their clothes, wondering how dubious garments that look as if they were casually put together without any notions of proportions and fabrics can be considered as produced by genuinely talented fashion designers.
Their A/W 16 collection, celebrating the design duo's 10th anniversary in the fashion business, is supposed to be inspired by a trip to San Francisco (the sisters attended the University of California, Berkeley). Inspiration hit them while sitting at Caffe Trieste, a historical den where bohemian poets, artists and musicians sipped their espressos and where Francis Ford Coppola penned most of the screenplay for The Godfather.
The resulting collection was a combination of two different moods, one derived from the two weddings in The Godfather, another from San Francisco's freedom and Art Nouveau inspirations.
Showcased is a set of rubble, gravel, living and dead poppies and neon tubing that suspended the mood between the natural and the artificial, the collection mainly featured a series of collage-like designs (that kind of amateurish look that Rodarte's supporters call "homespun touch") in which hand-beaded fabrics were combined with fragile guipure and mesh lace, and embellished with floral sequins, other options included single sleeve dresses in pink or burgundy.
Virginal white or black widow knee-length lace dresses and gowns with pouf sleeves, sequins and plastic petals worn with veils pointed towards the weddings out of The Godfather – think Connie Corleone and Apollonia Vitelli in their lacy confections and veils – but also emphasised the dichotomic edge of the collection.
You can argue that Art Nouveau's asymmetries, arches and curves and elaborate embellishments borrowed from nature were all channelled in these looks that also hinted at a sort of bohemian witch fantasy. Yet the fabrics quite often didn't spell quality and some designs were replicated (more or less identically) in two colours, white and black.
The romantic edge of the collection was shaken by a selection of leather pieces such as rigid jackets, boots and gloves that sprouted sinuously spiralling ruffles; multi-coloured cumbersome long-haired goat jackets and patchworked leather trench coats.
Flower power was added via floral earrings and headdresses made with real flowers. Actually the floral earrings made with calla lilies and orchids (by LA-based florist Joseph Free) received more Instagram likes than the looks on the runway, proving that maybe beauty wasn't in the most elaborate and intricate looks in the collection, but in this simple details that Mother Nature can provide.
Duplicity also closed the collection as models in long white, burgundy and black gowns stood next to models wearing shorter dresses in the same colours. This juxtaposition maybe hinted at a physical representation of virginal brides vs corpse brides and projected a sense of an eerie femininity on the runway.
Somehow the collaged (have the sisters been reading too many Creepypasta stories?) "bad girl gone corpse bride"-aesthetic of these designs was unsatisfying: the collection – based on black, white and red with some mud brown and dusky pink tones thrown in – revolved indeed around wispy dresses, knits scattered with ladders and holes (a trademark of this brand), and a selection jackets and coats that do not look particularly original. There were also occasional trousers and copious amounts of see-through lace pants and a limited number of accessories (note: you can easily find leather opera gloves covered in sinuous ruffles in specialised glove stores in Europe and, though expensive, they are definitely cheaper than designer ones…). The shoes also looked like reinvented versions of Prada's A/W 2008 Art Deco ruffled footwear (View this photo).
So you seriously wonder if the Mulleavys want to keep on being kids playing at dress up, or build a stronger brand. Fashion is an entrepreneurial business after all and quite often with Rodarte you get the sense that their collections are about their high-profile friends rather than their clothes and the women who (being able to afford them) may want to wear them.
The problem is that even a supporter and friend such as actress Kirsten Dunst doesn't look particularly good in their designs, so it is only natural to doubt about the fit and cut of their designs and silhouettes. Maybe the time has come for the sisters to move on. In the end, with their interest in films and narratives mixing horror, Gothic nuances and romance, and a film ("Woodshock") in the making (obviously starring Kirsten Dunst…), the loss of the fashion world could maybe become the gain of the film industry.
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