Conceptual playfulness is the phrase that could be the key to reach an (approximate) understanding of the Japanese vision of fashion. When it comes down to it, nothing is simple, nothing is what it seems, and everything is utterly fascinating, even if the meaning is often utterly obscure. Japan casts a spell on you; its sense of beauty is as breathtaking as it is unsettling. Beautiful People’s collections are a case in point. Following last season’s presentation in Paris, creative director and founder Hidenori Kumakiri staged a show of such arcane grace and technical prowess (definitely a très Japanese combination), it left the audience puzzled yet totally in awe.
Kumakiri doesn’t speak English; you need a translator to communicate with him. Yet he comes across as possessing the typical Japanese single-mindedness that can border on the obsessively genial. He definitely knows what he’s doing: His label is 10 years old, well known, and extremely successful in Japan.
“This collection is about making love,” he explained matter-of-factly before one of the mini shows on rotation in an airy, dark space. Upon seeing the startled expression of this reviewer, he felt obliged to expand on the subject. “It’s about making love,” he repeated.
To convey this quite clear pronouncement into actual clothes, which seemed no small feat, Kumakiri reverted to the genetic alphabet of chromosomes as a way of elucidation. “It’s like Y and X and how they make love,” he gestured, probably believing he was making his enigmatic concept clearer. Exasperated, this reviewer was ready to declare defeat.
Moved to compassion, the designer opted for a more practical explanation. He asked two seamstresses to dress a model in order to make the cryptic X-Y process understandable. Two similar (yet, of course, slightly different) long, tiered, floral-printed, Victorian-inspired cotton dresses, zippered or buttoned for the entire length on the back and on the front, were worn interlocked with an elliptical, twisted movement reminiscent of the spiraling of DNA. And voilà! As if by magic, what came out of all the warping and zipping and unbuttoning was a beautifully layered, romantic dress. “The idea is to make simple things look complex,” said Kumakiri with a smile. No doubt, he succeeded.
The twisting-and-interlocking process applied to the entire collection. A striped cotton duster was combined with a cropped black leather biker and layered over a tulle skirt. A raincoat was reduced to its tailored “bones,” nearly stripped bare, and intertwined with a long cotton dress, almost modest in its turn-of-the-century flair. Every look was a charming surprise of inventiveness, as if pulled from a romantic and twisted (literally) fairy tale. After all, single-mindedness is not such a bad thing.
