Rodarte Designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy

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[Narrator] Four, three, two, one.

Welcome.

I am sitting here with

Kate and Laura Mulleavy, who make up Rodarte.

My heroes are.

Einstein.

I have to think about that one, that's tough.

My idea of perfect happiness is.

Stanley Kubrick films.

Hanging out with my friends and doing something fun

that I didn't expect to do that day.

Let's go back to the beginning.

You guys grew up in Santa Cruz,

and then you made your way to Pasadena.

Yeah, mhmm.

[Krista] You went to Berkeley first.

Yeah.

And then Laura followed.

There was no fashion design course at our school,

but definitely, we were interested in it,

and so, we decided to take a costume design class.

And it was for theater.

And they gave us all the old Vogues from the 70s

to cut up, and Kate and I were like,

we can't cut these up.

So we stole them.

Every day, we'd carry. Every day,

we'd take them, and we'd carry them

down Telegraph Avenue, this big stack of magazines.

Those magazines weighed a lot,

and if we took all that effort to save these magazines,

these Vogues, clearly we're obsessed with fashion.

You then graduated.

You spent a year watching horror movies, pretty much?

That's true, that's very true.

And you decide to make a collection,

and one of those dresses out of your first collection

now hangs in The Costume Institute at the MET.

[Kate And Laura] Our first runway show.

[Krista] First runway show.

Yes.

It was a season and a half later.

A season and a half later, you end up in the Met.

I remember actually saying to Laura after we finished

that particular piece, I said,

I really know the kind of designers we're gonna be.

It's gonna be a harder path for us

because we really like things that are detailed,

and we will do things like this.

What was interesting to me was that

that was the piece that the curators had picked up on

because it had so much meaning for me personally.

And then you got a slew of awards

and Anna Wintour's in there kind of anointing you guys.

But what I really want to talk about is,

why do we love certain people?

'Cause I know you guys have your own muses,

like Elle Fanning, or Kirsten.

I think as we evolved, the more and more for us,

it was more about, I think really being interested

in people that were doing really interesting things.

Kirsten is a perfect example of that.

She was just so open, and I think she finds things she loves

and she has very unique and amazing taste.

Then she just, it's innate.

We could literally give her anything to wear,

and she would look amazing.

So, it's not really that hard.

It's just that it's fun

because she's so talented and awesome.

Do you think you could design something for Vin?

Yeah, totally.

[Krista] Yeah.

Right?

I mean, he'd be the most fun to design for

because he makes movies like Chronicles of Riddick.

Or even something like Fast and the Furious.

You remember the things that the characters

kind of wear as their signature.

Yeah, you could remake his cross.

Yeah.

Tell me about the new collection that comes out this fall,

which is really spring 2014.

How does it work?

Yes, spring 2014 is a show will happen in September.

But we can't talk about it right now because it's a secret.

[Krista] Oh, it's a secret.

Well, only because we just can't even go there

because we don't even know what it's about yet.

It's like cramming for exams.

[Laura] Oh, yeah.

You guys really do this all in a matter of.

Yeah, nothing's really even put together.

I think barely, at this point.

It's between now and the show where everything's done.

There's not necessarily just

this collection is this,

there's just a lot of ideas.

It's like, you need to just do it and tell the story,

however abstract it is, and then look at it

and kind of think about it.

Well, it seems like it could be exhausting.

'Cause as soon as you're done,

you have to start another collection

and then there's resort, and then fall.

The nature of fashion is that it's about this thing

that's constantly changing and evolving,

and you can only rely on what you did last.

But I think of it in a different way.

I kind of think of it is as it's just

you know, all part of a larger picture

and so for me, it's like whether the things are loved more

or not liked, it's all leading to an evolution of design,

and I think about how all the things come together.

So at the end, after 20 years of making things,

what does it really say?

I consider my greatest achievement to be.

I would say something cheesy as learning to be my own person

and trusting my gut.

I don't know if that counts as an achievement,

but I'll say that.

You didn't do your hero.

Okay.

Well, my heroes would be my parents, then.

So now I'm gonna look like the jerk.

Yeah, you are.

Because I picked Einstein,

and I also didn't pick hanging out with my friends.

But we're equal.

Our answers count for both of us.

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