Okay, see Look 1? Now check Look 28. See Look 2? Then jump to 29 . . . . Yep, Looks 1 to 7 feature the same dresses as Looks 28 to 35. And by same dress, read: same dress. Not two dresses in two different colorways—the same exact dress (or shirt ’n’ skirt). So . . . what’s up? What is this crazy alchemy? The answer, said designer Kunihiko Morinaga backstage, is in the fabric: a photochromic material that darkens when exposed to UV light.
That first seven-look suite appears muddy purple in the pictures but was black in real life. The reason was Morinaga’s assistants shining UV-light-emitting torches onto the clothes, which transformed them from from transparent to black. Even as those pieces walked their first walk, unexposed to UV, the color was fading. And by the time they came out again for their second round (devilishly confusingly now worn with different shoes) the color had faded completely.
During the show it was difficult to take this all in. Most of my bench hadn’t had the privilege of a preshow chat, and were enraptured like the rest of the room by the face chandeliers.
In between the two coups de théâtre repetitions we saw some lovely looks that melded crisply treated workwear and militarywear at the top via fabric-strafed intersections, with bottom halves made of technical semiopaque checked nylon. See Looks 17 and 18? About 30 seconds before they were photographed, when the wearers were standing at the back of the room against the white screen, elements of both looks were a sky blue color because they had been freshly UVed.
Morinaga said: “Anrealage means unreal, and real—I wanted to show an extreme of opposites in one garment.” This show reminded me of that miraculous chewing gum dreamed up by Willy Wonka (in the first, best movie, with Gene Wilder) that contains the flavors of a three-course dinner—“Tomato soup, I can feel it running down my throat! Roast beef and a baked potato!”—but which ultimately turns Violet violet. It was very clever, but the Oompa Loompa in you wondered what you would do-bi-de-do with the clothes in real life. In a fashion-land context, however, this was another radically different show from Morinaga’s uniquely eye-defying line.
