The first thing you noticed was the hair. This season, Rei Kawakubo employed Takeo Arai to create a series of towering mohawks and stiff bobs that were littered with multi-coloured hair clips. “I want to hope for some light, even if very small,” read her brief show notes, as the designer took her masterful Homme Plus tailoring to vivid, new realms. Think froths of pale pink cotton that spilled from fuchsia-hued, nipped-in jackets, oversized blazers in wallpaper-like, purple paisley prints equipped with extra arms, and sparkly, pinstriped skinny tuxedos dripping in tentacle-like bows.
The orchestral ’Parade’, originally created for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, soundtracked the show, adding to the performative styling of the collection, which included velvet, jester-like collars, ruffles that lined black evening coats and George Cox loafers, and trench coats plastered with glistening polkadots that were disguised beneath ghostly layers of black tulle. These were clothes that entertained in their ability to give the familiar a radical, spectacular bent.
Photography courtesy of Christina Fragkou.
