Rodarte Label Designs Costumes for Aronofsky’s “Black Swan”

 

The fashion designer team behind the Rodarte fashion label — sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy — designed the costumes for the highly-praised psychological thriller “Black Swan,” to be released in the US on December 10th. The film, the latest from Academy Award-nominated director Darren Aronofsky, stars Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as rival ballerinas.
Aronofsky and the film’s costume designer, Amy Westcott, wanted to reinvent the classic imagery of “Swan Lake,” looking for contemporary designs with a darker touch, to keep in line with the film’s underlying themes.
Interestingly, the fashion designs Rodarte had previously been inspired by both ballet and horror film-related imagery. An article by Mike Cidoni in Business Week quotes Kate Mulleavy as saying, “We had an affinity for the subject matter… We had never done a film. … This would be a dream job in terms of just getting to make tutus. But, then we had, I think, something that allowed us to add to access the psychology of the film in a different way, which was understanding the darker nature and more of the twisted kind of underbelly of that world.”
Rodarte has a noticeable celebrity following, with actresses often filling front-row seats during their New York Fashion Week runway shows — actresses including Natalie Portman. It was, in fact, Portman who introduced the Mulleavy sisters to Darren Aronofsky, leading to the design and creation of not only the ballet costumes seen in “Black Swan,” but also knit items, such as leg warmers and sweaters, worn by the actresses.