Edition: U.S. / Global

Narciso Rodriguez, Building on Stardom

Published: May 6, 2003

In the neighborhood where Narciso Rodriguez was cooking a skirt steak on his terrace barbecue last Thursday evening, a blinking ambulance rolled up Eighth Avenue and a woman carrying a grocery bag hailed a taxi outside the Chelsea Hotel. Above and below, the city sank into twilight. Office lights blazed obscenely. The actress Sarah Jessica Parker left her apartment to shoot scenes for ''Sex and the City'' and wouldn't get home until 7 the next morning. Quite a few people saw the sun set from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, or so it seemed looking through Mr. Rodriguez's high-powered telescope.

Many fashion designers have thought of the city as their own, attempting to incorporate its glamour and sugarplum essence into their clothes. One thinks of Halston and Donna Karan and the Indiana-born Norman Norell, of whom Laura Jacobs once wrote: ''A Norell by day was a Cadillac Coupe de Ville; by night, the Chrysler Building.'' But a Rodriguez conjures up a view that is both mundane and illicit. If there is a literary counterpart to points of chiffon that meet under the breasts or seams that flick across the fanny, it is John O'Hara. You can imagine Gloria Wandrous, the heroine in ''BUtterfield 8,'' putting on a Rodriguez sheath to drink rye and water at Tommy Guinan's Chez Florence.

''You know, he whispers,'' said Ms. Parker, a client, on Friday after she had had some sleep. ''Narciso will call me up and say -- her voice dropping -- '' 'I just found the most fantastic fabric.' '' Ms. Parker became a client during the fourth season of ''Sex and the City,'' nearly two years ago, when Mr. Rodriguez made a few things for her character, Carrie.

''Then I got pregnant, and he became my maternity designer,'' she said, her laugh indicating that he was the very last designer an expectant mother would think of; what a dress of his might do for her sex life up to that point was another matter. Four dresses were made, including one in pink double chiffon for a premiere. ''He and his assistant came to the set four days before and measured me between shots,'' she said. ''It fit perfectly. They even allowed for extra room, knowing that I would grow in those four days.''

This is Mr. Rodriguez's moment. No encomium strikes more terror in a designer, for it produces in every like mind the name and face of someone whose career was exactly that: a moment. Last year, Mr. Rodriguez was voted the best women's designer by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and this year he has again been nominated for the award, which will be announced at a gala on June 2 at the Public Library.

Massimo Ferretti, whose company Aeffe in Italy produces Mr. Rodriguez's clothes and accessories in a financial partnership that allows the designer creative control, said that sales for the most recent year were $20 million. That figure sounds surprisingly hefty given that Mr. Rodriguez doesn't have an advertising budget or a chief financial officer, and operates with a staff of 12 in his Irving Place studio.

As with many designers who appear to be more solidly fixed than they are, Mr. Rodriguez's status is magnified by editorial credits in magazines and by celebrity clients like Hilary Swank and Claire Danes, who last Monday wore one of his black stretch gowns to the Costume Institute gala. A few days later, he was in his studio fitting the actress Rachel Weisz for a new dress.

Still, the heat around his label is apparent, and not only in New York or among reed-thin actresses and models. At a trunk show in Dallas last October, the boutique Forty Five Ten took $100,000 in orders in three hours for Mr. Rodriguez's spring 2003 collection, Brian Bolke, a co-owner of the shop, reported. ''They're clothes husbands love on their wives,'' he said.

Two weeks ago, Mellody Hobson, a money manager in Chicago, stopped by the boutique Ikram on her way to a gala and left wearing a Rodriguez chiffon gown. ''I had a backup,'' said Ms. Hobson, who does financial reports for ''Good Morning America.'' ''But this dress, because I'm black and it was white, looked spectacular. It was all girl.''

Seven years ago, Mr. Rodriguez, 42, was virtually unknown outside Seventh Avenue, where he had worked as an assistant at Anne Klein and then Calvin Klein. Well, that's not precisely true. He was known for one thing: designing Carolyn Bessette Kennedy's wedding dress. Made of matte silk crepe with a built-in slip, it was fitted on Ms. Bessette, then a publicist with Mr. Klein, in a Paris hotel room and made in secret at Cerruti, where Mr. Rodriguez was employed.

''Carolyn used to say I was the only one who could give her exactly what she wanted,'' Mr. Rodriguez said. ''Because the process was quite personal. There weren't fittings with an entourage or a lot of press. It wasn't about that at all.''

Some 80,000 copies of the dress were eventually sold by Allen Schwartz, the knockoff king, alone. For Mr. Rodriguez, the son of Cuban parents, whose father is a retired longshoreman in New Jersey, the attention meant fame before his name was a label.