dshock, starring Kirsten Dunst. The sisters recently sat down for an interview with actress Maude Apatow at Afterpay New York Fashion Week to discuss their new exhibit, The Art of Rodarte, which brings together a number of runway looks and costumes from their nearly two-decade career. Here are some of the key takeaways from the conversation. On deciding to become fashion designers Kate Mulleavy: We were at school together – Laura studied English Literature and I was an Art History major – and we did ballet costumes for our friend Brian, and we said, ‘I think we really want to do this.’  We went back to LA after we finished school, and we had no real practical game plan for it. We didn’t understand how the industry worked. Laura got a job waitressing, and I had a record collection that I sold to Amoeba, [a music store] in LA, and we got enough money to buy some fabrics and build our first collection, which was 10 pieces.  The story is so crazy to me now – we had never been to New York, but we had a friend living there so we got on a plane with our collection. I had made all these little paper dolls that you could put the clothes on, and we sent all the sets out, and of course we didn’t get any responses. We didn’t even understand we had come to New York right before Fashion Week and there were all these major designers.  I remember four days into our trip thinking this might have been a mistake. But [then] we got a call from WWD asking us to come down. They said, ‘We want to ask you some questions and take your picture’, and a day later, they called and said, ‘Go down to the newsstand’, and they had put us on the cover. It was the day before New York Fashion Week. We went back to LA still not knowing anything, and [then] we got a phone call from Lisa Love at Vogue in LA. She had seen the cover and said, ‘Anna Wintour is coming to LA and she’s going to come see what you’re doing.’ And that was it.  It’s interesting to look back on because it’s such a crazy story. She [Anna Wintour] gave us the best advice we could have received. She said, ‘I think what you do is very personal and you need to keep it that way.’   On listening to your gut Laura Mulleavy: I was thinking recently about André Leon Talley. Our first meeting at Vogue was in a room with him and Anna. We had taken our Spring ‘06 collection, and he asked, ‘What are these inspired by?’ And Kate said, ‘Well these are fungal shells and redwood trees.’ And he thought it was so funny. I’ll never forget that moment because he said, ‘I’ve never heard that before in fashion.’ And I thought, ‘There you go. There’s something personal to us that will guide the rest of our careers’ I can see it. I can see the things that were starting in a first piece, where we would use a lot of pleating and waves, and I can see how that translates to wanting to use embroidery later on. You listen to your gut as a designer – we love textile, we love texture, we love organic symmetry, and experimentation. I can really see that over and over again. I think that’s something Kate and I share – I guess because we grew up as sisters and saw the same things. I think that shared dialogue does come out in the work. On designing the costumes for Black Swan KM: What’s so interesting about Black Swan is that it happened so early in our careers. It was a really magical experience. We have the whole archive of costumes – so we see them [when we] take them out for different museum shows – but I sat down the other day and watched [the film] and it felt like something out of body. That’s what I love about working on a film. All the elements – the production design, the actor, the director, the costume design – when you do it right, it becomes this storytelling that lives on its own. That, for me, is one of the more special things we’ve ever worked on. LM: Costume design is such an incredible process. It’s similar to fashion in that you’re inspired by things, but in fashion you’re on your own island, [and] in film, you’re bringing someone’s vision to life, you’re supporting someone’s performance, you’re there to make the whole world sing. It’s an interesting ability to be a part of something and not take lead – it’s a really powerful experience. On taking the leap into directing LM: I was on set on Black Swan and I thought, ‘I want to do this.’ I [called] Kate and said, ‘I think we should direct’, and she said, ‘I know.’ [Black Swan] was a beautiful experience, but it made me want to make my own world. That’s what we get to do in a runway show. We get to say, ‘This is the idea. This is where we want to take people’s imagination this season.’ It’s different when you see photos online afterwards because photos are flat; they capture the magic, but being there can really take you someplace.  I think we have a tendency to want to tell a story, whether it’s with clothing and we have an arc from the first look to the 35th look, or wanting to put that in a physical space like within a film. We just have that desire. KM: As a designer, we never came from a traditional point of view. When we first started, a lot of the conversation was: ‘We don’t understand you in the context of ready-to-wear. How does this make sense in real life?’ And I was like, ‘But we’re fashion designers. We’re dreamers.’  I think where we’re at with fashion is we all make our own reality, we can express who we are artistically. We want and need so many innovative and interesting voices – creativity should be one of the things that’s our main focus. And because we always [had] that perspective – our earliest inspirations were film – it was really natural that we wanted to make films. And we’re going to make more. Responses have been lightly edited for length.