While KENZO by NIGO reenacted the brand’s East-meets-West quality, FW24 tests our appetite with a coalition of aesthetics, whether real or fantasy.
The East-meets-West dichotomy is not just exclusive to sociology, but fashion too. Most notably, the migration of Japanese designers to Paris’ fashion scene in the late 80s, whose revolution still bleeds into our reality. The phenomenon’s reception was explosive, as it was amongst eager designers, inspiring generations after generations of auteurs to follow in their image. Kenzo Takada, of the label Kenzo, stood out as the first to have been praised by the French press, but the mythic quality of his trademarks has since faded amongst Paris’ smoggy fashion atmosphere. Instead, Kenzo is now KENZO, as NIGO — the Japanese designer who, too, shares a similar emergence — reincarnates the name for the novel ways through which we now see and feel the world.
Five collections in and the peripheries of KENZO by NIGO is clear: East-meets-West definitely, but NIGO silvers it into an intercontinental dialogue of culture. It is KENZO in complete incognito, as NIGO’s former experience in “hype” radiates a positive undertow that would take the brand to the heights of the season’s most ambitious, and explosive, theatrics.
Yet, FW24 takes on the optimism of cultural exchange beyond the limits of just fashion. It looks at a specific reference for a methodology to create something completely original — Star Wars creator George Lucas’ fascination with Japanese Samurais for his interstellar thrillers; the lightsabers and its vivid visual originality. It is a promising premise that paced open for the new collection to saturate traditional Japanese clothing with the tones of Western science-fiction, with no escaping the gravitational pull towards its weirdly, worldly extremity to such a crossover.
But ‘culture’ isn’t quite as we’re used to for FW24. A hundred years is reduced to mere hours in the new collection. Ancient graphics appear futuristic, on kimono coats that act as warrior capes. Edo Komon of 15th-century kimonos emerges as nighttime constellations on today’s utility wear. Or the most ravishing of all — modern Plissé dresses that would be worn by space opera femme fatales; think: Leia Organa in Star Wars, or even Lady Jessica in Dune. And while it all sounds avant-garde in nature, its execution was far from the inaccessible.
In this cosmology, as in ancient myths and epic poetry, everything began in a clash of cultures. No longer is it just Paris/Tokyo, but one world against another. NIGO betrays all that is known of KENZO’s reluctantly quiet recent collections for one that awakens the brand’s initial fascination. Plus, its showing in Paris’ most epic bibliothèque (library), enacts a side of KENZO that’s capable of telling a story — and is this not already culture itself?
Once you’re done with this story about the KENZO FW24 show, click here to catch up with our December/January 2024 issue.
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