Making clothes has always been deeply personal for the American designer Narciso Rodriguez. Those qualities, the very essence of modern fashion, are now being celebrated by Zara in a special collaboration with Rodriguez, a prospect for women thrilled for his look.
The timeline of Rodriguez’s remarkable career spans over 30 and encompasses the great fashion movement of minimalism, of which he is a key architect. His best-known design, from 1996, was the wedding dress he made for his friend Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, a slip dress so ravishingly simple it changed the bridal business and continues to be an icon of modern glamour. Yet, much of Rodriguez’s work gets better and better with time.
The Narciso Rodriguez x Zara collection reflects both his sharp sense of architecture and the intimacy he established with the body. What made a Rodriguez dress so sexy was not that it was tight-fitting or revealing, but that the body underneath always remained free.
He also pointed to a wrap coat in black double-face wool with side slits and a leather sash belt. “The coat is extraordinary, it’s that meticulous.” And the designer was happy to see an engineered turtleneck sweater come back to life. The black knit is sheer in parts and solid in others and has a built-in bra.
