California Condors, Boris Karloff as Frankenstein, Japanese horror films and Gordon Matta-Clark are among the many influences that make up the world of Rodarte. In just five short years, Rodarte has upended the fashion scene, bringing Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the designers behind the company, to the forefront of contemporary design and visual culture. Kate and Laura, who live and work between downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena, California, have consistently brought their love of nature, film, art and science to bear upon their unconventional and exquisitely crafted collections. Burning, sanding, dyeing, knitting, twisting, staining and weaving are some of the many complex techniques that have entered into the Rodarte textural vocabulary. Kate and Laura's past collaborations have included artists, actors, musicians and writers such as Miranda July, Autumn de Wilde, Ryan McGinley, Ari Marcopoulos and Darren Aronofsky. Created in collaboration with two of the art world's most sought-after and acclaimed photographers, Catherine Opie and Alec Soth, this is the first publication to examine the world of Rodarte. For the occasion, each photographer has developed an entirely new body of work in collaboration with Kate and Laura Mulleavy, examining the many facets of Rodarte's creative spectrum.
Without any formal training in fashion, California-raised sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, working as Rodarte, have become the most celebrated American designers at work today. Celebrities such as Kirsten Dunst, Natalie Portman and Charlotte Gainsbourg have all expressed their admiration for the Mulleavys, and Michelle Obama wore Rodarte at the opening ceremony of the 121st IOC session at the Copenhagen Opera House.

A Candid Portrait of the 1990s New Wave of Queer Culture In the 1990s, queer youth, outcasts and artists, flocked to San Francisco to find one another and to experiment with art, self-expression, style, and gender. Rent was affordable, paving the way for queer bars, clubs, tattoo shops, galleries, cafes, bookstores, and women-owned businesses to emerge. A new wave of feminism embraced gender bending, and butch/femme culture flourished. The Mission District was the center of this queer cultural renaissance, and the feeling of community was palpable. Chloe Sherman was both a member of this community and an ardent visual chronicler. Her documentary photographic work on 35mm film stems from a commitment to capturing the vibrancy, tenderness, individuality, resilience, and joy within this subculture that was derided by mainstream society. Distilling the spirit of the time, her debut monograph is a candid portrait of a vibrant era that connects current and future generations to the pulse of San Francisco at a pivotal chapter in queer history.

Celebrated photographer Catherine Opie (born 1961) has long documented the faces and landscapes of American communities, both inside and outside the mainstream. The subjects of her highly regarded portraits have ranged from California surfers, friends and fixtures in LGBT communities, high school football players and the artist herself. In this series of photographs documenting the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Opie broadens her focus to an expanded community of Americans: on January 20, 2009, over one million people gathered on the national mall to see the swearing in of America's first black president, united by their pride at what had been accomplished and a collective hope for the future. In the tradition of Robert Frank's photographs of the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and William Eggleston's 1976 "Election Eve" series, Opie's" Inauguration," a series of 100 photographs, offers an intimate political and personal view of one of the most public days of a nation. Accompanying texts by author, curator and photo-historian Deborah Willis and writer Eileen Myles address the significance of Opie's achievement with this body of work and further explore the wonder, elation and the self-conscious anticipations of this historic moment.