This was a good word to come across in the Sacai show notes: Free-form. It denoted something both about the outdoorsy, indie spirit of the Spring men’s and women’s Resort clothes, about the way they’re physically put together, and the mentality of the owner-designer herself. “I’ve learned that when I stop worrying about what will sell, and just go with doing things I feel like making, the better the sales reaction,” Chitose Abe said in a preview. “And I think this is the advantage of being independent.”
There’s a generational desire for liberation running through fashion conversations at the moment, and Sacai’s neo-hippy traveller people seemed in sync with that vibe. She collaborated with Pendleton for blanket prints which set the tone, put headbands on the models, stuck feathers in their hair, and we were off.
Video would do these clothes better justice than static runway shots. Abe’s design is what you might call ambient. All her panels and asymmetries come alive in movement, where you get to observe her use of blanket wraps—a bit tufted, and rough—and how she’s patched them in with parts of technical performance jackets, fragments of knits, denim, and so on. As always. Abe said her self-challenge this time was to stop short of creating perfection, and leave things a little undone. You glimpsed wavy zips, raw edges, and picked up a sense of spontaneity.
Of course, it takes craft, experience, and precision to be able to construct these collages—and Sacai’s rapidly expanding business is no accident.
