This was the third in what Kenzo's Carol Lim and Humberto Leon consider their David Lynch trilogy, following Pre-Fall and men's collections inspired by the filmmaker's oeuvre. Both of those shows had a Twin Peaks flavor. Having convinced Lynch himself to sign on as a collaborator this season, the connection was more explicit here, at least as far as presentation was concerned. The director mixed the soundtrack for today's show and was responsible for the large sculpture of a head in front of the camera pit. Its mouth was open in an agonized howl, but if the collection's mood was slightly darker than what we've come to expect from Kenzo, it wasn't as sinister as all that.
Backstage the designers said that Lynch's aesthetic had seeped into their clothes in specific ways. "There are tools in every one of his movies," Leon noted. Hence the printed and embroidered "tool creatures" that multiplied all over coats, pantsuits, and bustier dresses, as well as the fine-gauge knits that were used as layering pieces for many of the looks. Those turtlenecks will be appealing even to girls who don't dress in the irrepressible, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink way that the Kenzo show is styled. When things took a turn for the surreal, as in the shirt collars that morphed into peplums, the show was less convincing. Leon and Lim's Kenzo has become a success because of pieces that move convincingly from runway to reality. The items that seemed destined to do that here included ribbed knit separates embroidered with thin strips of bronze and silver metal, and a long quilted parka in a graphic acid-yellow and black pattern that, come to think of it, would probably come in handy in Twin Peaks, Washington.
