New York, 1999. Spanish designer Miguel Adrover arrives on the city’s fashion scene and quickly captures the attention of critics and influential figures, including American Vogue editor Anna Wintour. His collections are bold, politically charged, and uncompromising, establishing him as an avant-garde designer who challenged conventional boundaries between fashion, sustainability, and social critique. Repurposing found and discarded materials, Adrover transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary: a mattress once owned by British cultural icon Quentin Crisp became a coat, while a Louis Vuitton bag was cut apart and reimagined as a skirt. As he later recalled in Time Magazine, “Everybody was in love with me”.

The Designer Is Dead revisits Adrover’s meteoric rise in New York and traces his career through to his radical decision to leave the fashion industry behind and return to Mallorca in search of a different way of life. Drawing on previously unseen runway footage, rare archival material, and interviews with collaborators including artist Jennifer Hoffman and Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan, the film brings Miguel Adrover’s remarkable story back into focus.

The screening will be accompanied by a special introduction from the film’s director, Gonzalo Hergueta.

This is the tenth screening as part of "Fabricated Frames", a monthly film club curated by International Library of Fashion Research at Cinemateket in Oslo. Get your tickets now via cinemateket.no. See you Tuesday 9th of June at 18.00!