Rodarte

For fall, the Mulleavy sisters moved on from their signature inspiration, Japanese horror movies, leaving all those vengeful ghosts with menacing hair to scare audiences onscreen. Which isn’t to say their current preoccupation is very different or any less upsetting: the young women of Juarez, Mexico, who trudge to their factory jobs each morning in a procession of the walking dead, presumably dodging stray bullets from warring drug cartels. As they must dress in the dark, making do with the items around them, what resulted on the runway were seemingly discombobulated ensembles of traditional Mexican lace, layers of sleepy florals, strands of shaggy fringe, blanket-like bundles of plaid, and vaguely Peruvian woolens and mittens. The show ended with four exquisite Corpse Brides, beautifully sad in tattered wedding dresses. In the finale that followed—another procession—we learned that the shoes (designed again by Nicholas Kirkwood), with their heels made to look like they were dripping candle wax, had little night lights inside. Would someone please send them to the poor women of Juarez?

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