When light strikes a prism, it is split into a rainbow spectrum of colors. “And the color you see depends on your perspective, as well as where the light source is situated,” observed Kunihiko Morinaga backstage.
Entitled Prism, this collection was a typically technically innovative Anrealage show that quietly made a point about the myriad variousness of subjectivity: What you see depends on who you are and where you are—and everyone sees things differently.
From this particular subjective perspective, what was seen was groups of models emerging into an equilateral-triangle-shaped space surrounded by banks of spotlights. They emerged in trios and rotated from corner to corner with pauses in the center for photography. When the first trio finished their rotation, the lights came up to show that the gauzy PVC garments they were wearing incorporated prisms that suddenly refracted soft-focus reflections of the wearers within.
The ensuing trios of looks included prism-PVC ruffled shirts and dresses in a rainbow triangular check. Papery checks and houndstooths that rustled as the wearers walked on their cool prismatic Onitsuka Tiger x Anrealage high-top sneakers were invisibly covered with a “multi-ocular lens effect” coating that made them appear dotted by internal nano fairy lights when the spotlights came up. And the closing trio—actually, this eye saw a quartet—of garments made in a triangular patchwork of more differently angled prism-integrated fabrics prettily changed color as the lights around them flashed on and off from different directions.
Morinaga was not exclusively concerned with innovative prism effects: He went analog too. One trio focused on a triangular patchwork of large-gauge brightly colored traditional knits, while another saw different template garments in white split three ways and then grafted back together—so a jacket was one-third stadium, one-third bomber, one-third liner.
That’s just what I saw, though. You’ll see it differently.
