WASHINGTON, DC.- The celebrated American luxury fashion house Rodarte, founded by sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, is being featured this fall in the first fashion exhibition organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. On view November 10, 2018–February 10, 2019, Rodarte showcases the designers’ visionary concepts, impeccable craftsmanship and profound impact on the fashion industry.

The exhibition explores the distinctive design principles, material concerns and reoccurring themes that position the Mulleavys’ work within the landscape of contemporary art and fashion. Spanning the first 13 years of Rodarte, nearly 100 complete looks, presented as they were shown on the runway, are on view, highlighting selections from their most pivotal collections. Through a conceptual blend of high fashion and modern femininity that employs a multiplicity of textiles and meticulous couture techniques, Rodarte has drawn critical acclaim from both the art and fashion worlds since its inception in 2005.

“Rodarte continually prompts a dialogue between the worlds of contemporary art and fashion,” said NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling. “This exhibition will continue that discussion with new insights, illustrating the Mulleavy sisters’ highly creative practice and sources of inspiration.”

Early Rodarte collections drew critical acclaim for their use of unconventional methods and materials that fused dressmaking and art-making processes. Together, these collections reveal a rapid command of their métier as the Mulleavys mastered one technique after another, skillfully combining them in subsequent collections.

“We are honored to be the first designers to have a fashion exhibition organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts,” said Kate and Laura Mulleavy.

At NMWA, the collections are being displayed on accessorized mannequins as well as on invisible mounts, which will present the designs as floating sculptural forms.

“Rodarte burst onto the scene in 2005, taking the fashion and art worlds by surprise with their deeply personal and conceptual approach to fashion design,” said Jill D’Alessandro, guest curator of Rodarte and curator in charge of costume and textile arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “The exhibition celebrates the Mulleavys’ pioneering approach and explores their use of narrative to convey complex thoughts on a wide range of subjects, including film, literature, art history, nature and the California landscape.”

With each collection, the Mulleavys draw inspiration from a wide range of artistic sources, layering these elements into abstract narratives. This use of narrative allows them to address larger questions about the human condition and the greater world.

For example, in their Spring 2012 Collection, the Mulleavys were influenced by Vincent van Gogh. The collection references the painterly details of The Starry Night (1889) and Van Gogh’s iconic sunflowers, however, their initial ideas grew out of a visit to the Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles. It was there, not far from the Mulleavys’ Pasadena home, that Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding. Throughout the collection, digitally printed planetary images of space and sunspots are intermixed with details from Van Gogh’s paintings—which share surprising aesthetic similarities. The Mulleavys’ seamless blending of scientific imagery and Van Gogh’s art demonstrates that the painter’s abstracted interpretation of celestial bodies is, in fact, much closer to scientific reality than the 19th-century artist could have known.

Nature is also a primary source of inspiration for the Mulleavys, and can be found in most Rodarte collections, frequently in the form of floral and garden motifs. Drawing upon their childhood spent outdoors, the sisters often define their process through their relationship to the natural world. A garden is not just a garden, but a specific memory, touch or scent; a subject matter as serene as a flower garden has deeper implications. For the Spring 2017 Collection, inspired by the poetic Spanish film El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (1973), models were sent down the runway in yellow, white and black-hued layers of ruffled lace and dotted tulle reminiscent of a honeycomb. That same spring, the North American rusty patched bumblebee was added to the endangered species list for the first time.

The Rodarte exhibition is curated by Jill D’Alessandro, curator in charge of costume and textile arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, with support from Virginia Treanor, associate curator, NMWA. NMWA partnered with New York-based design firm Rafael de Cárdenas / Architecture at Large (RDC/AAL) to create an immersive environment within the exhibition.