New York Fashion Week: Rodarte

Hilary Alexander reports from New York fashion week

The Mulleavy sisters, Kate and Laura, from California, continue to provide the kind of avant-garde excitement normally associated with London.

	Fairy-goddess: Rodarte's ballerina-inspired dress

Keira Knightley is a major fan and has worn their fairy-goddess’ dresses in draped chiffon to several Atonement premieres.

For next winter, the girls were working with hand-dyeing and knitting in a colour palette which ranged from the balletic pastels of a Degas painting to Samurai-style black and red. Cobweb knits, hand-done in a mix of drop-stitch and crochet, came in random rainbow stripes.

Tutu and ballerina dresses, with tiny bodices - often backless - and swishy, frothy skirts, were fashioned from ribbon-like strips of raw-edge tulle and scattered with Swarovski crystals and sequins.

Long, column dresses, reminiscent of the draperies on Greek or Roman statues, were in white tulle, splashed with blood-red, acid-lime, grey, fuschia and forest-green. The dresses were accessorized with metallic, gauntlet-style driving gloves, hand-knitted ‘distressed’ tights and skyscraper-platform shoes by Christian Louboutin.

The finale, as the models formed a tableau on a square floor space surrounded by fluorescent tube lighting, was mysterious and hauntingly beautiful.

The Rodarte show also provided a welcome catwalk comeback for the former Oldham, Manchester model, Karen Olsen.

Karen, married to Jack White of The White Stripes, who already has a two-year-old daughter, gave birth to her second child, a boy, Henry, six months ago. She is happily settled in Nashville, Tennessee, lives a fantastic country-and-western life and says Oldham seems very far away.

She won’t be modeling in London or Milan this season, but is hoping to do a couple of shows in Paris.