Rodarte.

Byline: Jane Herman

Kate Mulleavy is comparing the dresses that she and her sister, Laura, design to the sound of the drum-heavy rock band the White Stripes. "They start with the most basic elements but make music that really fills a space," she says. "What we do, manipulating simpler textiles into really complicated things, is sort of like that." To call the Mulleavys' dresses complicated is a bit of an understatement-considering how much thought, on the verge of obsession, they put into them. To explain their process, Kate returns to the White Stripes: "They said that in order to work, they have to make their own world and live in it." To which Laura Mulleavy adds, "Yeah, and we're really good at that."

This world that the Mulleavy sisters live in and that their line, Rodarte, springs from is one of relentless inspiration and invention. Since the fall of 2005, the sisters have referenced everything from tree-bark formations to existentialist theory. In the end, their brainstorms-which might start with the clothes in a Thomas Gainsborough painting at the Huntington Gallery and end with a notion of "hollowed ...