One brand, Rodarte, and two sisters, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, as portrayed by two outstanding photographers, Catherine Opie and Alec Soth.
The much-awaited book Rodarte, Catherine Opie, Alec Soth (published by Brian Phillips) will be launched on 15 September at New York’s Public Library. It’s a journey into the world of the two current coolest designers through the shots of two great names in photography.
The book tells the story in images of the multi-faceted aesthetic that has created Rodarte’s success. The Mulleavy sisters, from California, immediately won public acclaim, both on the catwalk and at the cinema. They designed the costumes for Black Swan, the film starring Natalie Portman which won an Oscar this year. The critics love them too: in 2009 the duo won both the CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Fashion.
The book contains shots by Catherine Opie – portraits of models like Jenny Shimizu and Kate Moennin and of iconic women wearing Rodarte’s creations between 2008 and 2010 – placing them side by side with Alec Soth’s photographs. Soth spent two weeks travelling across California using a map tracing the ties of the Mulleavy sisters with the American state they come from: the shots range from Berkeley and Big Sur to the amusement park on the beach at Santa Cruz in LA.
There is also a text by John Kelsey which tells the story of Rodarte from a artistic and cultural point of view, completing and enriching the images.