Shirley Kurata and the Rodarte Designers on Their Dreamiest Collaboration: A Bespoke Oscars Look With a Nod to Barbra Streisand

At a look, Rodarte’s runway staging contained in the imposing Williamsburg Financial savings Financial institution didn’t appear to be fertile territory for Kurata’s color-drenched California sensibility. The temper was glitteringly macabre: lengthy banquet tables set with an unattainable feast of fruit platters, rose-topped desserts, and bagels (sure, bagels), all lined in a silver glitter that sparkled by candlelight. Fashions emerged in lank Elvira attire and gothic fairy wings and swishy metallic ensembles designed to swallow the physique entire. By this level, Kurata had imagined that her Oscars look would contain a sure practicality of material, given the marathon evening. “However then I noticed their beaded two-piece seems on the runway, and it was like, ‘God, that appears so fairly and images so properly. It’s so sparkly!” says Kurata.

In the meantime, the stylist was deep in her personal back-catalog analysis of Oscars seems previous. The one which caught her eye was Barbra Streisand’s nude-illusion pantsuit, an Arnold Scaasi design that accompanied her 1969 greatest actress win for Humorous Lady. The small print are pitch-perfect for the period: sailor collar adorned with a bow, white tuxedo cuffs, broad flared legs. “I simply thought she regarded so cute,” Kurata says. “With that type of drama of the sequins, I used to be like, ‘That’s so memorable.’”

Subsequent got here the alchemy in Rodarte’s arms. “I at all times say, decide the material first,” says Laura. “Let the material inform you what it needs to be.” Kurata discovered herself drawn to a fragile crimson tulle that didn’t find yourself making the minimize for the autumn assortment. Laura and Kate remodeled it right into a hand-beaded floor-length costume, with an identical cape and, like Barbra, a bow (this one on the waist). “With Shirley, as a result of we’re all in trend, there was no limitation,” Kate says. “The place I like to be as a designer is engaged on one thing that’s structured however appears so easy and lightweight.”

This Oscars second, in a approach, brings collectively two of Kurata’s prolonged households: the close-knit EEAAO crew and the honorary Rodarte sisterhood. “One connection to the movie was the colour,” Kurata explains—“particularly with the scene within the laundromat, the place they’re celebrating Lunar New Yr.” (Kurata’s Japanese American mother and father coincidentally additionally owned a laundromat throughout her childhood.) There are the symbolic meanings of crimson: “prosperity and luck and luck and all that.” And the eye-catching high quality too—a coloration that, for as soon as, stands out on a carpet reimagined in champagne. “I’m simply so excited to have the ability to put on Rodarte to one of many greatest occasions in my life,” Kurata says, calling the completed look, all the way down to the {custom} footwear, “so me.” There is only one extra element to contemplate: the costume designer’s signature eyewear. “We confirmed my mother the picture of black glasses versus crimson,” Kate tells Kurata, taking their sisterhood up the household tree. “My mother took one second. She’s like, ‘Oh, it’s obtained to be the crimson.’ And you recognize what? She’s normally proper.”