LOROD Does a Preppy Homage to Robert Rauschenberg

Lauren Rodriguez’s label, LOROD, has quickly garnered a reputation as one of New York’s coolest upstart brands, and its latest collection revolves around the tailored, effortlessly preppy charm of women’s sports uniforms. To celebrate these straight-out-of-boarding-school vibes, LOROD has created a video tribute to one of Robert Rauschenberg’s lesser-known cinematic works—news that’s sure to delight real abstract expressionism heads.

“I have a fine arts background. I went to Parsons for painting and sculpture, so I naturally gravitate toward art research when I'm putting together collections—the palette of a painting or a sculpture might inspire a common thread,” Rodriguez told GARAGE. For LOROD's pre-fall launch, Rodriguez drew inspiration from Rauschenberg‘s “combines,” looking through her own collections of “matchbooks, old flashcards, all kinds of weird ephemera.”

“I made a women-in-sports-themed print inspired by Rauschenberg's assemblage,” said Rodriguez. “As I started looking more deeply into his work, I remembered this piece he had done called Open Score that features lots of artists—Frank Stella, Simone Forti—playing tennis at the Armory, with lights and mechanisms that make a beautiful echoing sound when the rackets hit the balls.”

Rodriguez drew inspiration from the movement of the clothing in Rauschenberg’s video to create her own eerie, refined video on the tennis and squash courts at Tuxedo Park in upstate New York.