NYFW: Rodarte Spring/Summer 2010

No one ever doubted that Rodarte collection would be in any way similar to others. The two super-talented sisters do know exactly how to amaze people.

The new Spring-Summer collection is a parade of post-apocalyptic warrior princesses. The models were wearing unusually torn and twisted garments on hugely inked bodies. Tribal tattoos were everywhere, from the girls’ shoulders to wrists and together with fierce vampire-looking makeup created a bit bizarre impression. To add to that, the models had to walk a black sand-covered runway, through the thick fog of dry ice Nicholas Kirkwood bondage heels.

Short dresses with twisted plaid and raw-edged fabric, longer black gothic dresses embellished with feathers and strips of leather and a pair of skinny black rocker pants with silver zippers and cut outs along the thigh and calf and lots of other really weaird outfits looked unspeakable .

Kate and Laura Mulleavy said the collection was inspired by a trip with Johnson Hartig of Libertine to California’s Death Valley.

We imagined this woman who was stranded and mangled and burnt alive, and then being reborn as a Californian condor. What we wanted to say was that this person could tell a story. Their bodies would be a physical transformation, there would be scars everywhere. So that’s where the tattoos on the body come in. And the idea of having hair that looked like it still had ash on it.”

To make the collection possible Rodarte sisters had to burn, stain and sandpaper all types of expensive fabrics, then spent two months hand braiding leather, plastic and macramé to piece together the look of a stranded woman in the middle of the desert. What they got in the result was “it’s about empowerment and survival and coming up stronger for it.”

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