Narciso Rodriguez

The movers and shakers of Philly's Breast Health Institute and Fashion Group International have been busily planning 2003's "Give the Shirt Off Your Back" gala, always a swanky (and very pink) affair. For their special guest this year they have invited fashion designer Narciso Rodriguez, modern design's patron saint of the shapely and the streamlined, the bishop of the bias cut.

Gowns made by the Jersey-born Cuban American have been worn by many celebs (Sigourney Weaver, Carolyn Bessette, Claire Danes, Julianna Margulies, Salma Hayek), and he prides himself on designing clothes for the full spectrum of the female form (though he's best known for outfitting the lanky, like the gown Bessette wore when marrying JFK Jr.).

Everything he does is stunning, elegant and passionate, Margulies commented backstage at Rodriguez's Fashion Week show for his spring '04 line last month, while dressed in black NR from head to toe. If there had to be one show to be at, this would be it. At the show, all eyes were on Linda Wells and Glenda Bailey, two top fashion editors who attended wearing strikingly similar Rodriguez pieces, almost stealing the focus from the designer's shoulderless red stretch-cotton pique dresses and his '50s-ish corset-inspired pieces. They were really wearing the same dress? a soft-spoken Rodriguez nearly whispers. How cute. That whole night was crazy.

What wasn't crazy was that Rodriguez -- an industry vet who came through the ranks designing for Donna, Calvin and Cerruti before creating his own collections -- made his 2004 statement a continuation of the revolutionary fashion conversation he started in the mid-'90s. That's of utmost importance, maintaining the dialogue I've had between myself, women and clothing creating different cuts and seams and keeping them all quite sleek.

Rodriguez's clean, spare look may seem simple, but in reality, this may be his most studied and constructed line yet, a mix of '40s and '50s influences woven into a tapestry of the present. It's always clean. And pure. But never simple, he says.

Rodriguez grew up with a love of painting and architecture, the self-described king of the Lincoln Logs, blocks and Legos. I had a thing for making shoebox-inspired model houses. Watching his seamstress mother work made Rodriguez conscious of the process of creating fashion. His elegant, Chanel-clad aunt, with her jangly charm bracelets, pointy stilettos, big hair and bigger laugh, was influential, a matriarch of the newly arrived Cuban Americans to 1950s Newark.

By the time he hit New York in the 1980s, Rodriguez knew the design he wanted (the linear, architectural signature he'd become famous for), the place he wanted to study (Parsons), his inspiration (the structuralism of Balenciaga) and whom he wanted to apprentice for (Donna Karan). I remember the WWD cover on Donna -- 'Tough Chic' -- all black leather sportswear. That was cool. She was cool. And she was hands-on, cutting, draping, an amazing designer. Some people who call themselves 'designer' never touch fabric or buy cloth. She does, he says.

He learned not only to make great clothing, but to make clothing work.

It had to be worn. By women. I know that sounds simple. But too few designers think that way, Rodriguez notes. In Paris, he began experimenting with the bias cut, taking cues from men's tailoring and fabric, making things a bit sexier and sleeker in a town where shock was the stock in trade. For me, what was shocking was developing the most improbable thing you could put on the runway -- clothes you could actually wear. Everyone was thrown for a loop. Read more...