“It was my first show, and I didn’t know anything about making a fashion show. I just put everything I had into it and wanted to have fun,” said Doublet founder and designer Masayuki Ino, which is perhaps why his presentation felt like a party. The models’ faces were oiled to look as if they’d just come out of a particularly sweaty rave, and blue and green club lights flashed over the runway.
The clothes themselves were rave-ready, too: One faded graphic tee featured Marilyn Manson’s huge yellowy visage on the front and Sex is dead embossed on the back. The overarching message was tongue-in-cheek meta anti-fashion. The word knit was knitted onto a sweater in a Vetements font; XXL appeared very large on an oversize pullover; and Underwear showed up on the waistbands of, yeah, underwear. Major fashion cities were referenced in highbrow-to-lowbrow manner: Paris replaced Pepsi on the beverage’s blue and red logo, for example. Garters suspended pants that were cut off above the thigh; a messy alphabet of Doublet varsity letters were patched onto a burgundy calf-length coat; and humongous suit trousers were pulled up to the midriff of a cropped sports T-shirt. The Japanese sukajan (souvenir jacket) influence was clear, too, with traditional tiger and eagle iconography warped into abstract embroidery that was emblazoned onto the arms of a leather jacket or up the legs of mauve velour track pants.
What stood out the most was the mixture of professional and nonprofessional models who walked the runway. Demi Demu, the up-and-comer Tokyo stylist who is a core part of the Doublet family, worked closely with the models to create individual looks that did a good job of capturing the character of those wearing the clothes. “It is all about individual character. I don’t care about it being cool,” said Ino. Despite that sentiment—or perhaps because of it—Doublet has cool in bucketfuls.
