Drawing on Los Angeles for inspiration, design duo Kate and Laura Mulleavy went rock’n’roll for Spring/Summer with a collection based on their home city’s predilection for, in their own words, 'Hair Metal Bands, the Sunset Strip, Rockabilly, Old Hollywood and the 1980s.' This mixed bag of trashy-chic references resulted in a collection of youthful sexy-cool wares that appeared an amalgamation of Rihanna, the B-52s and Flintstones style, with brash leopard and zebra prints adorning leather bra tops, skirts and silk evening dresses complete with risque sheer cut-outs and thigh-high splits – an eighties big-haired, long-legged Guns’n’Roses vision to behold.
While perhaps an unpalatable rejection of luxury to some, the bold wares featuring appliqué lobsters, asymmetric hemlines, dirty denim and exaggerated fringing in a palette restricted almost entirely to black and white, was certainly a return to the sister’s early audacious aesthetic. To close the show, striking two-tone floor-length dresses featuring frills and sultry mesh inserts took to the light-up disco catwalk – after-all, it wouldn’t be a Rodarte experience without knockout eveningwear to appease their celebrity fans.