Yusuke Takahashi recently went to the United Arab Emirates and lost himself in the desert. The result was a collection presented in an order meant to reflect the shifting of light across one sun-scorched day. (Which was pretty appropriate: Paris is so blazing that we were handed ice packs, the better to get through this hugely hot show.)
We started in sludgy neutrals notable for the judo-jacket wrap shirts and superwide paper-bag pants, all in painstakingly perfected iterations of the house’s favorite synthetics and shrunken double-face cotton. A cracked mud pattern in knits and prints added eye feel to Takahashi’s carefully observed silhouettes.
At sunset there was a single kapow! of color in a powerfully orange collarless shirt and pant ensemble, but it was the technical khaki suit that came immediately afterward that was the dreamiest site on this runway. Prints that looked like aerial photographs of the desert sliced then spliced together were in fact hand-rolled, geology-inspired, patterned marble printed onto polyester. As night fell we saw some gorgeous pieces in deep blue—how great is Look 46?—before the designer rose at the end of the runway to mark midnight, and fin.
