Masayuki Ino has a unique touch for capturing the zeitgeist at his thoroughly entertaining shows. The combination of set, casting, and clothes allows for fluid conversation, reference spotting, and, above all, endless questions.
Ino staged his spring 2023 menswear show in a courtyard in Paris, where he recreated a summer picnic under a blizzard. He placed models in classic summer situations, two sunbathing, one grilling, another working out, and there was also a doppelganger of Stranger Things’ Eleven mid-telekinesis. All of them froze the moment the first look walked out, and, by the time the snowfall started around look 10, the venue looked like a snowglobe. “I aimed to express the strangeness in our daily life,” he said via email, adding that the purpose of the stop motion was to create an unusual but almost “miraculous” situation, as was the point of making it snow in the middle of the Parisian summer. Frankly speaking, our world these days is very unusual. All of those jokes about how we’re living in a simulation are starting to feel eerily realistic.
Doublet’s clothes are often as entertaining as the sets, and this time was no exception. The through line, at least in the first half of the show, seemed to be a meaty barbecue theme. To flesh it out (sorry, I had to), it’s best to look at the variety of skin-like treatments in the collection.
The show opened with a spiky knit bodycon dress reminiscent of a dress form (a nod to Margiela spring 1997, one would assume); then came a fleshy pink crochet dress with a variety of skin-toned swatches (almost reminiscent to a makeup palette), a pink suit with gloves included and a finger belt buckle and waist chain with fingers as links. Later, Ino added a t-shirt with a trompe l’oeil torso meat tin can, a tinfoil colored moto jacket with burnt edges, and ripped jeans with a shiny pink lining to mimic the model’s legs. All of this had a point. Ino says that one of his key materials this season is a nylon and recycled poly mixed fabric with a trompe l’oeil cloth print. “I wanted to express the smooth texture of the T1000 of Terminator 2,” he said, “so it’s like CGI clothes walking in the real world.” Trippy.
Most striking, and perhaps most telling of his headspace, were a series of invisible men that came at the end of the show. Ino called these his key silhouette for the season, mentioning that, particularly in the tailored jacket and trench, the body is built like a cocoon so that it can be worn as presented up to the head; it also has removable shoulder pads to switch up the silhouette to “something different than just oversized.” What made these interesting is that they continue the line of normcore innovations we’ve been seeing on the runways for some time now, but instead of solely relying on volume and fit to break the mold, they rely on the wearer. Ino’s clothes often feel like they’re meant for folks who are willing to play the part that comes with them, and these are the hero examples of that approach.
With his materializations in this collection Ino wanted to blur the line between virtual reality and reality itself. As much as he accomplished this with the show’s fleshy first half, he’s also actively engaged with what’s happening in our IRL world. You had the Stranger Things reference, a snowstorm at a fashion show (we all remember the last time that happened not so long ago), and a hoodie with the word “hoodie” on it (sans quotes, but still nodding at Virgil Abloh).
Another popular -verse term these days is multiverse, and Ino’s show felt like a fashion show diorama of the concept—very Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.
