Fashion Week 2010: Rodarte

When the world ends, and you survive it like a giant cockroach or Cher or something, what do you wear afterward? Rodarte‘s Spring 2010 line, if you’re fabulous.

Set against a dystopian, foggy, grit-strewn runway, the sisters Mulleavy presented what is possibly their most well-realized collection in New York on Tuesday. It was clothing fit for a woman living in a wasteland – deconstructed and reconstructed into something that is far more than the sum of the materials that went into it. And those materials were many and varied, and all individually treated and ruined before they were incorporated into the clothing. We saw things as familiar as leather and plaid and as unexpected as cheesecloth, worked into some of the most interesting and intricately constructed clothing of this Fashion Week.

The combination of patterns, textures, and colors in these clothes is enough to make anyone’s head spin, but look closely and it’s all done with such obvious care and thought that I’m in awe of the post-apocalyptic art that they were able to create out of their many and varied scraps of fabric. These are the kinds of clothes that a casual observer may not understand at first look but that fashion people absolutely salivate over.

As they appear on the runway, most of the dresses may not be particularly starlet-friendly, but I hope that a few stars out there that enjoy challenging, innovative clothing will take the plunge and strut a red carpet or two in some of these dresses. Surely some alterations to make them more buyer-friendly will be made before they go to distribution, and with an edit here or there, I think they would look fantastic on a statuesque risk-taker like, say, Charlize Theron.

Pictures via Style.com.