New Rules

Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia are bringing OSCAR DE LA RENTA to a fresh audience.

- Véronique Hyland

There may not be many axes where Huma Abedin and Paris Hilton intersect, but apparently, fashion is one of them. At least when it comes to Oscar de la Renta. Both Abedin, of Hillary Clinton campaign fame, and Hilton, of early-aughts nightclub notoriety, have worn the label. As have Amal Clooney, Millie Bobby Brown, Céline Dion, Sandra Oh—the list goes on. It’s hard to pin down a commonality between these women, other than the fact that they all look very much like themselves in ODLR.

Typically, designers conceive of their “girl”—a sort of cameo portrait of the woman they hope to dress. In their three years as co–creative directors of the brand, Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia have done the opposite: widened their scope, gone macro where others have gone micro. They don’t have a “girl,” per se; they aim to outfit a wide swath of people. To them, dressing someone is a “collaboration.” Kim and Garcia apprenticed under the house’s late founder, and they still think of the question he asked every time he created something: “What does this do for her?”