![]() “I’m just so excited to be able to wear Rodarte to one of the biggest events in my life,” Kurata says, calling the finished look, down to the custom shoes, “so me.” There is just one more detail to consider: the costume designer’s signature eyewear. “One connection to the film was the color,” Kurata explains-“especially with the scene in the laundromat, where they’re celebrating Lunar New Year.” (Kurata’s Japanese American parents coincidentally also owned a laundromat during her childhood.) There are the symbolic meanings of red: “prosperity and luck and good fortune and all that.” And the eye-catching quality too-a color that, for once, stands out on a carpet reimagined in champagne. This Oscars moment, in a way, brings together two of Kurata’s extended families: the close-knit EEAAO crew and the honorary Rodarte sisterhood. But during an awards season in thrall to The Daniels’ take on alter-egos, multiple Mickeys is the way to go. (Rodarte’s fall 2019 show took place amid the rare plants at the Huntington Library, in their hometown of Pasadena, while the costume designer hit up LA’s Chinatown to source seniors-appropriate clothes for EEAAO.) “It’s reversible, so the other side is one big Mickey Mouse,” Kurata explains. She’s wearing a vintage dolman-sleeve shirt with a repeating grid of Mickey Mouse faces-fitting for a trio of Southern California natives, whose sense of place often weaves into their work. ![]() On the wall behind her, a looping print in an orange-to-brown gradient nods to her ’60s fascination. Kurata, in her trademark owlish glasses, has joined from her home in the Los Feliz–Franklin Hills area. Rodarte’s other half, Laura Mulleavy (older by a year), is calling from the car. The theme song, emotionally delivered by Streisand as only she can, is beautiful, but the relevance of its nostalgic lyric to this clear-eyed movie is doubtful.“Honestly, it’s really hard for me to think about a time where she hasn’t been a creative collaborator, a best friend, an artistic partner,” says Rodarte cofounder Kate Mulleavy, describing Kurata’s presence as “an extension of sisterhood.” (It was the filmmaker and photographer Autumn de Wilde who played matchmaker, roping in Kurata for that first show the stylist has worked on their runways and lookbooks, alongside Ashley Furnival, ever since.) Kate is speaking over Zoom from the label’s nondescript studio in downtown Los Angeles. Both stars are perfect for their roles we can see what they see in each other and we desperately want it to work for them, though we know it won't! Notable in support are Bradford Dillman, Lois Chiles, and James Woods. Presumably much of this side of the scenario stemmed from the personal experience of writer Arthur Laurents, who was the same age as his protagonists, and who had McCarthy-related problems. Though melodramatic and sketchy, the political dimension of the story should not be underestimated this is one of the very rare American movies in which a communist is treated sympathetically. The main action spans the eventful decade from the Spanish Civil War and New Deal, through WWII, to the McCarthy era, by which time Katie and Hubbell have moved from New York to Hollywood, where he is a screenwriter. Fascinated with each other precisely because they are such opposites, they have an affair, marry and have a baby but their inability to compromise - or in his case to stop compromising - leads to break-up. She remains the serious-minded Jewish left-wing activist, and he the easy-going, politically uncommitted WASP, they are when they first meet in college in 1937. Character development (or arc) is supposed to be one of the basic elements of a good screenplay but the whole point of Sydney Pollack's 1973 movie is that neither Katie Moroski nor Hubbell Gardner changes. Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford look wonderful in this great story of doomed love.
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