Juniche Abe said that here he was trying to revive the “elegance, snob, simple, decadent” mood he enjoyed conjuring for a collection back in 2011, but with an altered aesthetic recalibrated for now. If those four elements might seem mutually exclusive, well, not for this designer. His wearable collages use highly technical practice to combine an eclectic abundance of template garments into finished products of great complexity and impact.
Here Yusuke Tanaka’s dizzying film presentation, a stop-motion taken by 26 iPhones that accelerated or slowed according to the tempo of Kikagaku Moyo’s Smoke and Mirrors, shows that complexity from every angle (and features a great cameo at 5:30). In an email Abe said he had been especially smitten by the altered drape actioned by inserting undersized garments within generous ones; micro-dosed examples include looks 1 and 6. He added that the effects of the lockdown have left him musing on many notions, including: “Is there any way we can show much more detailed images or feel of fabrics online?”
Certainly it’s frustrating when looking at garments such as his virtually, unable to take them from the rail, turn them inside out, and work out what has been combined, where and how, as we do during the usual frazzled Paris appointment. Yet there were different elements to enjoy here: the psychedelia of the music reflected the psychedelia of the clothes, all chaos theory collisions that stretch wearable logic while retaining it, wantably.
