As we ease out of the pandemic, Rodarte is designing clothes that are all about movement — and maybe even a night out of dancing.
“We started off by being very inspired by music and the theatricality of performing on stage,” Laura Mulleavy, co-founder of Rodarte, tells Vogue. The brand’s penchant for theater is evident across its past collections; Rodarte’s Fall 2022 lookbook, for instance, is an ode to the dreamy world of ballet and dance. While its Spring 2023 collection stays true to its love of performance, they’re drawing upon a different kind of entertainment this time.
In a vibrant new collection, Rodarte brings to life the ’90s world of discos and rollerblading through pieces like a rainbow-psychedelic-swirled slip dress, a metallic-sequined frock with structured epaulets and glittering hippie-flared pants. Burnout velvet, a popular ’90s-era fabric, is used generously on multiple looks: as white and black horses on a blue chiffon dress; as botanical patterns on top of see-through mesh draping; as delicate trimmings on a striped purple dress.
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The collection is lensed by longtime collaborator of the brand Daria Kobayashi Ritch, styled by Shirley Kurata and Ashley Furnival, and modeled by Beyoncé Ambrose, Bingbing Liu and Kate McNamara, among others. Each look features a model sporting a punk-inspired asymmetrically spiked hair moment, in varying shades of — you guessed it — ’90s-friendly acid orange, electric blue or neon green. This overall punk aesthetic inserts a feeling of rebellion among a relatively feminine collection.
While some of the silhouettes are relatively conservative, others have more dramatic contours. This is especially true of an entirely hand-knit purple gown that cinches at the waist, then flares out in the style of a 19th-century crinoline dress. Kate Mulleavy reveals to Vogue that said dress is made of a special type of yarn that “that almost looks like saran wrap.”
See every look from Rodarte’s Spring 2023 collection in the gallery below.
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