Oscar de la Renta Will Make You Fall in Love With Gowns Again
There may not be many axes where Huma Abedin and Paris Hilton intersect, but apparently, fashion is one of them. At least when it comes to Oscar de la Renta. Both Abedin, of Hillary Clinton campaign fame, and Hilton, of early-aughts nightclub notoriety, have worn the label. As have Amal Clooney, Millie Bobby Brown, Ce?line Dion, Sandra Oh—the list goes on. It’s hard to pin down a commonality between these women, other than the fact that they all look very much like themselves in ODLR.
Typically, designers conceive of their “girl”—a sort of cameo portrait of the woman they hope to dress. In their three years as co–creative directors of the brand,Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia have done the opposite: widened their scope, gone macro where others have gone micro. They don’t have a “girl,” per se; they aim to outfit a wide swath of people. To them, dressing someone is a “collaboration.” Kim and Garcia apprenticed under the house’s late founder, and they still think of the question he asked every time he created some-thing: “What does this do for her?”
It’s a refreshing approach in an era when American sportswear is in a neck-and-neck race with its jock cousin, athleisure; when evening dressing could conceivably mean denim and sneakers; and when personal style trumps “full look” perfection. In fact, what Kim and Garcia are doing might just represent the future of a certain kind of refined American style.
The two have a long history with the house, and with each other. After graduating with an architecture degree from Notre Dame, Garcia worked at Oscar de la Renta for six years. It was there that he met Kim,a Pratt grad who was already an ODLR veteran—she spent a dozen years at the house, eventually becoming its design director. In 2015, they left the brand to launch their own label, Monse, showcasing their first collection in a Chelsea townhouse. A year later, they returned to the Oscar fold. Today, they split their time between de la Renta’s stately, flower-filled Bryant Park offices and Monse’s slightly more downtown digs, located, well, downtown. “It’s fun for us to have a different perspective,” Kim says. “If I did Monse all day long, I might get a little bored. Sometimes I go to Oscar after Monse, and I’m really refreshed to see embroidery and super expensive fabric. And sometimes I come back down here and I’m like, ‘It’s so nice to see a hoodie.’ ”
Today, the office dog, Louise, is pertly perched on Garcia’s lap like a stenographer. As with many longtime duos, Kim and Garcia speak in stereo. Kim: “The way we approach eveningwear changed a lot in the past three years because we’re seeing women differently.” Garcia: “We’re traveling a lot more. We have to have something that can accommodate all sorts of climates and body types. And because of Instagram, we’re constantly on the pulse of what is—” Kim: “You see your clients, what they’re doing.” That new approach to evening dressing is “much lighter,” Kim says. “And more versatile,” Garcia adds. “A top does the job of a cocktail dress now.” He remembers designing a jumpsuit for the house eight years ago. “It was so scandalous because it wouldn’t sell and it was going to be a showpiece.” Now jumpsuits are one of their best-selling items. They’ve even shown knits that are oversize and intentionally torn—what could be read as punk in a certain zip code. Those pieces, Garcia says, “are not as pristine as they used to be. And that’s a response to the world we live in now.”
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who wears their opulent gown on the previous page, has been a longtime fan. “They are both really sweet, humble, and down-to-earth,” she says, remembering their Monse debut as “so different from anything I’d seen before.” She’s since gone on to wear plenty of their Oscar designs, including her look for this year’s Met Gala, a Jean Harlow–inspired soft pink gown with a huge feathered cape.
Garcia and Kim are focused on ramping things up even further: After a well-received fall 2019 collection inspired by Co?rdoba, Spain, they’ve launched sleepwear, have plans to relaunch shoes, and just opened a store in Paris. There was a small Baroque bump in the road last year during construction, when a seventeenth-century oil painting was found hidden in the building’s walls. “We’re going to try to find a way to preserve it,” Garcia says. It might be a parable for their design careers: Even as you’re breaking new ground, history always finds its way in."
Photographed by Max Papendieck. Styled by Djuna Bel. Hair by Bridget Brager for Herbal Essences; makeup by Kate Synnott for Carasoin; manicure by Emi Kudo for Chanel; model: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley at IMG; on-set production by Zosia Garcia Sledzinska.
This article appears in the October 2019 issue of ELLE.
You Might Also Like
