Designer aims to shine without the limelight

Narciso Rodriguez is not the showy sort. The New York fashion designer made his name on the quietly elegant slip dress Carolyn Bessette chose for her 1996 marriage to John Kennedy Jr. He talks about his craft in terms of building and engineering, not shock and theater. And his runway shows are classy affairs, without over-the-top Kabuki makeup or vertiginous platform shoes.

A party Thursday night to celebrate Rodriguez’s visit to Los Angeles was also tame. It was held at Barney Greengrass, the rooftop restaurant at Barneys New York in Beverly Hills.

Rene Russo, Lucy Liu, Amber Valetta and Kelly Lynch wore tight, stretchy Rodriguez dresses in bold combinations of red, cream and black, so expertly engineered that the fabric seemed to buttress their curves without the need for any undergarments.

In a culture where stars are expected never to wear the same dress twice, Liu paid him the highest compliment: “His clothes are so classic. After you’ve worn a dress, you wouldn’t really take it to Decades [resale shop].” (Liu wore Rodriguez to the July premiere of “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.”)

Mingling outside on the terrace with flutes of champagne glowing in the moonlight, the 40 or so guests didn’t seem to mind too much that dinner was delayed an hour. Party organizers were waiting for the pop songstress Jewel. She never showed, but Robert Evans did. In a sea-foam velvet suit and a bolo tie, the tanned and taut producer stood out against Rodriguez’s lithe, sophisticated beauties. The only other flashy fashion statement of the evening was a chunky gold ring the size of a Gobstopper perched on the pinkie finger of Barneys New York creative director Simon Doonan. The Dior “nugget” ring is a hot seller, already having been mined by Gwen Stefani.

Though he is a press and celebrity favorite -- he designed all of Sarah Jessica Parker’s maternity clothes and counts Claire Danes among his closest friends -- the 42-year-old Rodriguez is not so well known outside those circles.

He may not make a lot of noise, but the fashion world is listening. In June, he received his second consecutive Womenswear Designer of the Year award from New York’s Council of Fashion Designers of America. His work is “the equivalent to architecture, but not quite as boring,” Doonan said. “Every outfit is intriguing and challenging from a design point of view. The reason why I worship at the temple of Rodriguez is that he goes through the necessary process, i.e. buying fabric he feels emotionally drawn to, sketching, pinning, draping, cutting patterns, re-cutting them. It’s a formal exercise, which is what clothing design should be.”

Friday, when Rodriguez returned to Barney Greengrass for lunch before a trunk show at the store, the slight designer with shiny black hair seemed shy. Dressed in jeans and Nike running shoes, he stuck out in the crowd of hipster diners, because his look was so uncalculated.

He loves sports clothing, he said, and finds inspiration in racing stripes and logos for his body-conscious dresses and suits, which often have contrasting color insets to articulate the curves of the waist and hips. He does a lot of thinking about his collections at Crunch Gym, where he keeps a sketch pad handy even when he’s running on the treadmill. (In the last few years, he has lost more than 30 pounds.)

The son of Cuban American working-class parents, Rodriguez grew up in Newark, N.J. “I just remember being a kid and seeing all these fabulous Cuban women in stilettos, tight skirts and boxy jackets,” he said. “Latin men have a certain way of looking at women, of appreciating women and their bodies. I think I kind of inherited that.” (His favorite place to vacation is Brazil; he’s been three times this year.) But his background presented challenges too. “It was tough for a Latin male to say, ‘I’m going to be a fashion designer.’ There was a little resistance there,” he said, laughing.

After graduating from Parson’s School of Design, he worked for Donna Karan, who was head designer of the Anne Klein label at the time.

Later, he worked for Calvin Klein, where he met Bessette, a publicist in Klein’s New York showroom. The two became close friends and, later, they worked on her wedding dress together. “It was a bit overwhelming,” he said of the ensuing media maelstrom. “I had gotten some recognition for my work, but I was just really starting out. It’s not like I had a press office or even an office of my own to handle all of that. It was something very personal that turned into a big media event.” (He has not read Edward Klein’s bestseller, “The Kennedy Curse,” in which Bessette is portrayed as an emotionally volatile cocaine abuser.)

Rodriguez opened his own company in 1997 but was soon hired to head Loewe, a fashion label established in Madrid in 1846 and now owned by the luxury goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy. He stayed on for four years, but working for such a huge company, “didn’t work for me,” he said diplomatically.

The designer returned to New York City for the fall 2001 season, showing under his own name again, and he continues to present his runway collections there twice a year. He also designs shoes and this fall is launching his first fragrance.

He employs a staff of 12 in his Irving Place studio, but his clothes and accessories are produced in Italy by the apparel manufacturer Aeffe, which backs him financially. Sales last year were reportedly $20 million. He did $105,000 in sales at his Barney’s trunk show in a matter of hours. His $2,380 stretch black cashmere coat and a $1,295 black sleeveless dress with white insets were the bestsellers.

Although the pressure of producing four collections a year (spring, fall, holiday and resort) can be a grind, Rodriguez tries to remain even-tempered, especially during fashion week.

“Last season, I felt really guilty. While everyone was up all night, we were done early. We finished the process about a day and a half before we were actually showing, so it was great,” he said. “People always come to my office, and comment on how peaceful and quiet it is. It doesn’t seem like the normal fashion place. But I can’t work in a hectic environment.”

This is one reason he’s spurned the bells and whistles so loved by many of his peers and instead likes to show his collections in as calm a way as possible. “I think sometimes when people do that, they are trying to draw attention away from the fact that there aren’t any clothes on the runway. It’s so wrong to me. I really love the craft, and that’s what I’m there to show.”