Hideaki Shikama uses Children of the Discordance as a magnifying lens into subcultures around the world. In the past, he’s imagined a post-conflict world, studied BMX and the aesthetics of the ’80s, and the ’90s street culture of the Japanese city Yokohama, where he was born and raised. The result is an exploration of dressing under the carefully outlined POV of Children of the Discordance: There’s distressing and repurposing, re- and de-contextualized graphic elements, and always a very good suit.
For spring, Shikama focused on the United Kingdom’s hardcore music culture, more specifically, he explained over Zoom, through the eyes of a close friend of his that was deeply influenced by the London scene in the ’90s. Shikama learned a lot about the scene from his friend, but his biggest takeaway was the style of the time. In his native Yokohama, he was surrounded by punk and hardcore skaters who would wear the hodgepodge aesthetic that merged the skater and music scenes of Los Angeles and the UK at the time, which he is now placing in the 2020s with this lineup.
“The inspiration really puts in context a silhouette that is more streamlined and slimmer,” Shikama explained through his translator. His trousers were cut slim at the hem while still retaining the fullness at the leg that is in the Children of the Discordance wheelhouse. Together with semi-cropped jackets with slightly curved, long sleeves—and a handful of over-the-knee skirts with raw hems—Shikama found a conscious balance between the punk streamlined silhouette he was after and the more relaxed shape he often sets forth in his collections.
Where the inspiration best met Children of the Discordance’s youthful, crafty allure was in a run of jackets and jeans patchworked with four different kinds of cotton in shades of beige and black. “The people who love hardcore are very DIY,” he explained, which is a quality that Shikama has imbued in his sustainably minded collection from the start. Also to note here were the band poster-like patches that Shikama placed haphazardly on some pieces. The artwork was designed by the artist Ohina, who creates hardcore band posters and album covers. These graphics also nodded at the LA skater brands Shikama would often encounter in the ’90s: Dogtown, Skull Skates, Fresh Jive, and Eight Ball.
There is something authentic yet deeply oxymoronic about the way Shikama employs discordance in his collections. He finds inspiration in youth-led countercultures and their often disorderly stylistic cues, sure, but his label is a study in consistency. Each collection uses the same design codes under dissimilar lenses, referencing subcultures of the designer’s own youth. But the key is that what’s on someone else’s moodboard, Shikama has usually experienced first hand—it doesn’t get more real than that.
