Rodarte Catwalk Fashion Show New York SS2012

That was a beautiful, colorful and romantic collection Rodarte sent out yesterday. Part Sleeping Beauty part Vincent van Gogh. The artists’ color palette and paintings with sunflowers, cherryblossoms and starry night inspired the Rodarte sisters. They explained to the press that they fell for the greens and purples of the 1959 animated Disney classic Sleeping Beauty, and asked themselves who else uses colors like that. They found their answer in the Dutch postimpressionist painter. It was all the more unexpected for the fact that those Van Gogh prints can turn out into something kitchy.

The Mulleavy sisters have flirted with kitsch before, but here the effect was often hypnotic. The clothes were a mesmerizing concoction of color, construction and fantastical gowns. No matter how voluminous or seemingly simple, every look was boned for precise fit and structure.

Van Gogh’s colors are powerful, and not just his purples and greens, but also the blues and yellows. But the fifties prom dress silhouettes—nipped at the waist, with focus at the shoulders and the flaring hems—seemed so resolutely in the past. Young women might like it and wear it, but will grown up women pay more than 4000 for a dress like that? Yet there was also plenty of downright approachable designs — tapered, cropped, pants; tiered georgette skirts and fantastic color-blocked hand-knit cable sweaters.