"When I started Kolor, I made a promise to myself never to explore in any apparent way themes such as military or sports," Junichi Abe said after today's Kolor show, a delicately masculine affair of reconfigured tailoring, somber hues, volumes, and military detailing. "Of late, I have changed my mind."
Thankfully, Abe knows that coherence, as a design virtue, is only effective when it comes sprinkled with a little incoherence. Hence the concession to militarism. Kolor keeps evolving slowly but steadily, and this new collection, slightly harder than usual in its martial finesse, was a welcome step forward. The goings got a little bit darker than expected, and fabrics a little bit sturdier: A papery cotton canvas was used profusely on trousers and shorts that produced an unmistakable sound when models walked by.
The tropes of militaria were all featured, from camouflage patterns to outsize utility pockets, but they were reinterpreted through the Kolor lens, getting soft and blurry, in a charming way. The look was layered, with a crisp precision to it. The most interesting part of the collection, beyond the painterly sportswear we're familiar with, was the light tailoring done in dry suiting wools: subtle and exact, yet slightly anarchic in its unbalanced volumes. With Abe, everything is in the small details, which is a plus in our age of blatant hyper-visibility.
