KENZO’s subculture space cowboy NIGO adds a sprinkle of moon dust to his Pre-Fall 2024 campaign, reinforcing his use of intergalactic narratives to elevate the heart of the Parisian maison’s creative identity.
Established earlier this year with the Paris maison’s FW24 collection, contemporary cultural zeitgeist NIGO continues imbuing his sense of fresh perspective in the house he became Creative Director of in 2021, with the new Pre-Fall 2024 campaign. An extension of the sci-fi, intergalactic motif as a fresh medium through which founder Kenzo Takada’s East-meets-West dichotomy is expressed, the campaign prefaces NIGO’s cosmic contribution to the cross-continental dialogue in the wider FW24 collection.
A campaign that — like the FW24 collection that it precedes — taps on the creative methodology George Lucas employed in his creation of Star Wars (where he turned to Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress for inspiration), it is the visual manifestation of chasing sunrises across galaxies far, far away.
Here, Canary Islands-born photographer Lengua — known for challenging conventional ideas of nature — captures the juxtaposition of the earthly and cosmic through the balance of textures, poising a rocky and lunar beach-esque landscape against a soft backdrop of lapping waves on the shoreline. Factor in the play between silhouettes and motifs, symbolically suspended in the liminal space between the grounded and the futuristic, and the Oriental-Occidental dialogue that lies at the heart of the maison’s creative identity shines through.
One of the highlights of the FW24 collection was NIGO’s avant-garde interpretation of the Plissé dress — here, a similar, albeit softer navy take on the classic silhouette arguably forms the centrepiece of the collection, evoking the billowy dresses worn by silver screen space royalty, such as Star Wars‘ Princess Leia Organa.
Other highlights include the carrot-cut workwear pieces crafted in denim or hakeshi baten-inspired weave patterns from Japanese firemen’s jackets, forming the collection’s grounded, utilitarian sensibility; rhinestone Rue Vivienne and boke flower logo tees and shirts, as well as a silvery sequinned dress, convey the collection’s cosmic spirit.
KENZO’s Pre-Fall 2024 campaign includes a further nod to Japanese electronic band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) — a formative source of inspiration for NIGO, and a key reference point for the FW24 collection — taking the form of a motif of five men carrying briefcases, seamlessly transitioning into the main collection.
While this Pre-Fall 2024 campaign marks a similar awakening from the relative slumber of past collections as the main FW24 collection did, NIGO’s return to the heart of the maison’s creative identity, and his elevating it to a clash of cosmic narrative worlds, heralds — to paraphrase Jamiroquai — the stylistic return of KENZO’s subculture space cowboy.
Once you are done with this story, click here to catch up with our May 2024 issue.