The message from New York fashion week this season? Rain does not stop play. Ask Laura and Kate Mulleavy, the designers behind the celebrated American label Rodarte, who staged their spring/summer 2019 show at the open-air New York City Marble cemetery.

After a two-year hiatus from the NWFW schedule, it was not the balmy September evening they had presumably planned on for their homecoming. As guests gathered in the gated space, clutching umbrellas in one hand and mobile phones in the other, the rain was unrelenting, albeit atmospheric.

There aren’t many brands that would be so well complemented by a downpour of this kind, but Rodarte, which has made an ethereal aesthetic its signature, is one.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Rodarte show was staged in a cemetery. Photograph: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

Having shown on the Paris couture schedule during their break from New York, the sisters have returned fluent in the exquisite execution of the French genre they employed for their new collection.

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Models came swathed in lashings of tiered lace and tulle veils, with the kind of all-over embroidery and embellishment more usually found in the ateliers of the French capital instead of the more commercial hotbed of the Big Apple.

The Mulleavys’ foray into film – they released Woodshock starring Kirsten Dunst last year – was put to good use here too. As the rain coated the flagstones on which the stilettoed feet of the models, backlit like apparitions from the set floodlights, were perilously stepping, a palpable sense of suspense engulfed the show.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Unrelenting rain made the Rodarte show atmospheric. Photograph: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

Also proving undeterrable as the weather rained on its parade was Telfar. As one of the hottest tickets of the week, the outside location for his show on the banks of the East River was no obstacle for the loyal guests of the popular designer, Telfar Clemens. Nor his entertainers, who created a vocal mash-up under the open skies to the beat of one drum kit and included Lauryn Hill’s daughter Selah Marley.

There’s a lot of love in New York for Clemens, who started his unisex fashion house in 2004 aged 18 as an antidote to the mainstream conglomerate-funded brands dominating the industry, and built an underground following as a result. His independent label instead became defined by diversity and inclusivity, creating “pure garments without the ornament of gender, race, [or] class”, as he told guests in his show notes.

Having persisted - “despite being ignored” - for more than a decade, the ultimate recognition came last year when he scooped the coveted CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund which injected $400,000 into his bank account to scale his brand. “We want to turn this into a business; develop the clothes that don’t just look good in a picture but are fully developed and ready for market,” the designer told the Guardian of his win.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Designer Telfar Clemens walks in the rain at the Telfar presentation during New York fashion week. Photograph: Noam Galai/Getty Images

This season showed that he’s well on his way with a show that he said was “dedicated to America”, and its “nice landscape, good arable land and plenty of shelter to go around”.

In what he called an “immigrant palette”, models came in tops and T-shirts turned inside out and printed with icons of the USA including the nation’s flag, eagles, and Budweiser graphics.

Jeans came spliced, flared and patchworked, while tailored trouser suits were pared with wide-collar shirts or buttoned-up polo shirts. Accomplished and bound to get fashion retailers excited, it’s a business developing with style as well as substance, a winning formula that is a refreshing presence on the NYFW schedule.

“We don’t really feel anything like competition from other fashion brands because we have kind of staked out our own territory,” Clemens told the Guardian this year. “There is a lot of insecurity in the business of fashion right now and there’s a chance that the way we already do things – if we can scale them – could represent a new way forward.”