November 2, 2022 |
Free-spirited, fun and full of verve, Kiko Kostadinov’s has dropped a collection with Hysteric Glamour. Featuring campy ready-to-wear pieces, suave sneakers and a co-published, page-turner photobook called Pretty Hurts, this lush link-up bridges the gap between creative communities across London and Tokyo, with one artful collection.
You know Kiko, but for the record, Hysteric Glamour is a Japanese designer label created by artist Nobuhiko Kitamura in 1984, born as a product of American culture’s growing presence in Japan at the time. In conjunction with Kitamura’s subversive approach to style and his rejection of commercial and conservative fashion, it made waves through to the naughties and quickly became a punk staple. Following Kitamura’s fascinations with the aesthetics of pop art and 1960s mass media, as well as science fiction films, punk music, American comics, fast cars and porn, the cutting-edge brand broke barriers between Japanese street culture and Western society, acquainting the wider-world with the counter-cultural forces behind Harajuku style especially.
Digging into the Hysteric Glamour archive, Kiko Kostadinov womenswear directors Laura and Deanna Fanning reference everything from Kitamura’s early works to brand mainstays, which are then articulated in classic Kiko silhouettes. With star-spangled American motifs, assorted illustrations and sticker-like decals reworked, repurposed and collaged together, the audacious graphic language of Hysteric Glamour is alive and kicking throughout. Worn by American-born Japanese model and actress Kiko Mizuhara in a series of images by Rosie Marks, a faux denim jacket and a set of modular skirt-trousers are stamped with co-branded logos that form a trompe l’œil of embroidered denim patches on repeat. The knitwear is effortlessly oversized; stretching, distorting and twisting around the body, coming emblazoned with bold logo intarsias and camouflaged “H” and “K” characters, too.
For good measure, the trainers are part of a triforce alliance between the brands at issue and footwear frontrunner and longtime Kostadinov collaborator, Asics. Fabricated as a nod to Hysteric Glamour’s aesthetic language in tartan and reflective black meshes – with the option for a pearlised glitter brilliance in both colourways – the Asics Gel-Quantum Lylia was made for walking.
Pretty Hurts, on the other hand, was made for admiring. It’s a photographic-essay by London-based photographer Rosie Marks, co-published by Kiko Kostadinov and Hysteric Glamour. Detailing a mosaic of eleven vignettes, flowing into each other and guiding us through an exploration of contemporary notions of beauty and glamour, oddities and curiosities take centre stage and exist freely in their individually constructed – or reconstructed – worlds.
It was in 1993 that Kitamura first expanded into the art world by releasing a series of limited-edition photobooks created in collaboration with Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki, Terry Richardson, Russ Meyers and Rita Ackerman as guest art directors. Following on from this, Pretty Hurts feels like something of a full circle moment, dipped in Kiko Kostadinov cream.
While Kiko Kostadinov x Hysteric Glamour pre-released in Tokyo this weekend, hitting Hysteric stores and Dover Street Market Ginza with a bang, it drops on Kiko Kostadinov’s e-commerce store November 8. So if you’re stuck in the Western hemisphere for the moment, keep your eyes peeled.
Photography by Rosie Marks.
