Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy on the Transportive Power of Fashion Shows—and What to Expect From Their Return to NYFW

February 4, 2008, was the moment for Rodarte. The horror films that designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy grew up with had bloomed into a collection of menacing spider knits that cocooned over models’ bodies. There was blood red, earthen brown, and escapist shades of blue, all stitched into a vision held up by teetering Christian Louboutin platforms adorned with golden spikes. When Abbey Lee Kershaw closed the show in a Gothic gown of wafting chiffon, it was cemented in stone: Kate and Laura Mulleavy were it. A perfect storm followed: Natalie Portman wore one of the dresses to the Berlin Film Festival. Rachel Weisz wore another on the October cover of Vogue. There were profiles of the sisters, and celebrations for their collection, and stores knocking on the door for more commercial versions of those singular knits. Their stars were born.

“I told Laura that I haven’t really felt like this since that collection,” says Kate Mulleavy inside her makeshift studio in New York, where she and her sister are preparing their Fall 2020 show. “It taps into a part of our brain that we don’t always go to,” Laura adds. “We’re excited.”

The sisters have good reason to be excited. Later today they will return to New York Fashion Week after an 18-month absence. When their fall 2020 collection is displayed in St. Bartholomew’s Church, it will mark a return to a haunted inspiration—the sisters cite Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula as their chief reference—and a moment when it all comes together for a brand, its designers, and the audience. Watching the duo and their stylists Ashley Furnival and Shirley Kurata fit models in their looks, trying out lace gloves and spidery earrings, it’s instantly obvious: This is Rodarte at its absolute best. Explaining it here won’t do much justice—especially because the Mulleaveys have requested for as little as possible to be said about their actual garments until they appear on the runway—but also because the other thing the pair does expertly well, aside from design, is evoke a mood and set a scene. What guests inside the Byzantine-revival building will see today might move them to tears.

“We both grew up being obsessed with fashion and the idea of a fashion show in New York City. All the things associated with that are really inspiring to us. Having that experience and getting to do the show here—it’s pretty thrilling,” says Kate of their return to NYFW.

The Mulleavys return to New York at a time when the industry is feeling pretty down about itself and its abilities to stage fashion spectacles on par with London, Milan, and Paris fashion weeks. To them, that crisis is not one of confidence—or ability—but one of creativity. “I think that what is really, critically important for New York is embracing creativity. When fashion thrives is when we can understand that it can be different things: It’s an artistic expression, but it can also be commercial. I think the problem is when you limit it and say things have to be a certain way,” Kate says, advocating for a “making it more free for people with different voices and broader strokes of unbridled creativity. That’s what’s vital to New York City culturally and vital to the fashion industry.”

She continues, “People would always ask us: ‘Why isn’t there more ready-to-wear?’ I would always say, ‘We’re fashion designers because we have a dream every season.’”

The Rodarte dream started to evolve into its current form when the designers left New York Fashion Week for the first time, opting to show in Paris during couture. “There were a lot of things that shifted when we went to Paris,” begins Kate. “One was that we’ve always been really inspired by nature and the environment that we work in, and going and doing that show and being in that space freed us in some way.”

“That show was actually the catalyst for Kate and me to think about how we can get more out of a show for our audience and how we can make it more exciting,” Laura picks up. “Your audience has very little time because they’re going to more and more shows. How can you convey emotion within 10 minutes and make it more exciting and commanding? I feel like the change came when we started hopping around to different locations.”

“I didn’t realize that would be important for us. I thought because we’re kind of maximalists that maybe stripping back the surroundings would be good for the clothes,” she continues, describing the Chelsea gallery shows the pair put on for most of their early career with show producer Alexandre de Betak. “Then I realized: No, let’s take it there even more fully. I guess we’re more cinematic thinkers, and I think that our collections don’t come out of us in a straightforward way.”

“It was inspiring for us too. It lets you feel new about what you’re doing,” Kate chimes in. “It lets you create. It lets you miss something and want to go back to something and want to do it again. That is really invigorating from a creative perspective.”

In the time since that Parisian couture show, the pair have held a NYFW show in the pouring rain—something they would have to contend with again today if their venue was not indoors—and photographed two magical lookbooks starring their friends and muses. “I felt like when we did our show in the rain in New York, it was one of those moments when you realize why you’re doing a fashion show—and the power of it,” says Kate. “I will say this: Alex was a pretty fearless leader,” she adds of De Betak, who advised the sisters to keep their show outside, even when an indoor venue became available at the last minute. (Don’t worry, they did notify the guests about the weather.)

As they finish off the looks in the studio, the sisters begin to wax poetic about why they do all this—and the potential fashion has. “A fashion show can take you out of the place you are, out of your own mindset. That’s really powerful,” says Laura. “Look at the market fashion has, it’s become one of the biggest industries in the world. It wasn’t that way when we started; it was so much more insular. Now people understand fashion at such a young age, and they find it to truly be a way of expressing themselves.”

“If there’s any negativity [around Fashion Week], I feel that maybe it’s just a lot. It’s a lot of information; it’s a lot to achieve. It’s just a lot,” she continues. “That becomes more and more difficult for the designers, the editors, and the buyers. All you can do in that instance, if you know you’re going to be doing the collection every season, is to really try to make people excited to come to your show. Put some emotion in it.” Today there will be plenty: enough to confidently say that February 11, 2020, will be another important date for the Mulleavys.