In Paris yesterday, Doublet designer Masayuki Ino offered up a smorgasboard that seemed to crib, unknowingly, from Auntie Mame, who famously said, “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.” It was the show of the week in terms of diversity—size, color, shape, age, religion…and cuisine.
Inside a gallery in the third arrondissement, the designer staged a “We Are the World” manifesto, set in a typical Japanese-style cafeteria. Models settled at their tables in fun, fanciful getups, their trays laden with food sculptures in molded plastic—the kind one sees in Japanese restaurant windows all over the place, except this time the fries were recast as a Ferris wheel, Wagyu beef came as a handbag stuffed with vegetables, and pastries were a carousel. The outfits were likewise, a joyful mash-up.
What with scoring the LVMH Grand Prize two years ago, Ino’s been traveling all over the world, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the idea of a cafeteria came circling back. “This is like a typical Japanese family restaurant where we always went as kids; you can eat whatever kind of foods you like,” he commented. It may be a metaphor for fashion today, but the designer said he’s never met food as delicious as his childhood memories.