Kenzo (Q1188)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
French luxury fashion house
- KENZO
- KENZO PARIS
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Kenzo |
French luxury fashion house |
|
Statements
2004
artistic director of the Women universe
2019
creative director
Tonight’s Kenzo runway was a circuit of gold-painted sand that encircled the fountain inside the Palais Royal. We were barely a minute’s walk—in usual circumstances—from the Galerie Vivienne site of Nigo’s first show for the house in January 2022 (as well as founder Kenzo Takada’s first-ever store). Tonight, however, was far from usual: The house had mustered a front-row that included fan-magnet Vernon of Seventeen.During a pre-show check-in, Nigo’s translator Toby Feltwell said: “This is his sixth show. He is really enjoying the process now…he always thought that what he wanted to do was going to take at least three years to work. And he feels like he's kind of reaching the point that he wanted to get to when he started.” For the first time in that six-show tenure, Nigo decided to unravel his menswear and womenswear collections and instead show them back to back.The menswear opened around a fine new bamboo camouflage pattern shown on a roomy trench, tropical blazer, and breaky pants. A pale green pajama suit was layered under a billowy duster coat; this look was topped by a double-brim baseball cap and a pair of the “tuned-up” rubber-soled zori sandals developed by a specialist company in Kyoto that made easy work of that golden sand. Double zipped mesh hoodies that seemed to reference camouflage netting were sometimes entirely fastened closed then worn under sunglasses in order to disguise the wearer’s face from instant recognition (which could be useful for Vernon when going incognito). The bamboo camouflage was further developed in embroidered satin bomber jackets and taped trousers apparently inspired by the pants favored by scaffolders in Japan.Stitch-embroidered pale denims and utility khaki suits, new characterful patterns by Verdy on bombers and knits, and black suiting and a skirt illustrated with finely brush-stroked souvenir images of Paris followed. A laser-cut liner-profile suede jacket and matching patch-pocketed long short worn over a bamboo knit, shortly followed by an embroidered indigo denim full-look (including cap), both made for excellent ensembles.In womenswear that bamboo camo blossomed into florals. The netting translated into crochet via vaguely atomic flower dresses and tops. And the strapping morphed into fringing that hung from floral scarf-skirts, tops, and dresses.
Nigo said the palette of powerful color was derived from a pad of origami paper, an inspiration further explored in the folded-edge wrap mini-dresses in cream and maroon. At the end Pharrell Williams rose to his feet and clapped every step that Nigo made in his newly-designed Nike Air Force 3s around the golden circuit.
19 June 2024
Although France’s Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library) Richelieu site is positioned on the same street as the Kenzo studio, it made a great venue for tonight’s show for more than mere convenience. As Nigo had earlierexplained, this Kenzo collection worked to connect multiple cultural references in order to concoct something that hit the eye as fresh rather than derivative. The roof of this magnificent reading room, hosting its first show for someyears, is decorated with some of the cities whose culture has contributed to the knowledge its books contain: Babylon, Vienna, Rome, Carthage, and more. And while the twin poles of this collection were very much still Paris and Tokyo—as Cornelius’s original soundtrack reminded us—this Nigo production did seem to travel further than ever before.The check was a Nigo adaptation of a tatami mat print, while the twist-stemmed floral was a version of karakusa, a popular pattern for packing fabrics that came to Japan from China and reputedly before that from Egypt. Nigo scattered shearling mittens, aviators and strapped jerkins— explorer wear—around deconstructed treated denim workwear. Some coats were borderline robes and came with back-strapped belting details and open apertures under their arm holes in treatments including an ’80s-style acid wash. Worn under one of these, a knit cardigan impressed with an image of spiral star systems enforced the sense we were going far, far away.Another reference for Nigo was school uniforms. Here red and green collarless blazers inspired by his own student wardrobe came draped with a chain of Kenzo themed institutional buttons. It was interesting to see how this piece intersected with his close collaborator Pharrell Williams’s Pont Neuf jacket: while they weren’t a million miles away from each other, they made a different sense. There were also short and long duffle coats—originally seafaring outerwear from the far north—woven in tatami check jacquard.Over time, Nigo’s Kenzo womenswear has become less unisex and more conventionally “feminine,” as he adapts to producing a category that was new to him when he started here in 2021. Tonight’s strongest pieces included rib-knit mini-dresses with rounded accentuated hips cinched by wide leather belts and tatami print dresses with sweetheart necklines. Some of these came with chunky metal neckpieces that looked like wrenched-open versions of the cover art for Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells.
”More chest pieces in padded fabrics with straps were, for sure, inspired by Japanese protective attire but also made you think—at least if you were in this show’s audience—a little of Craig Green’s London-sited interpretations of similar source material. There were hints of more established cross-cultural fare in letterman jackets emblazoned with Kenzo iconography. Looks that placed chest rigs over black tailoring or outerwear accelerated your association into hyperspace via X-wing. This collection was Nigo’s most assured and complex for Kenzo to date.
19 January 2024
Pharrell Williams arrived at tonight’s show wearing a full Kenzo look by his dear friend and close collaborator Nigo—accessorized with a fresh-from-the-oven (and runway) yellow duffle from his own debut collection. It was a full circle moment. Those aware of the lore will know that one of Williams’s first formal forays into fashion way back when came by Nigo’s hand when they co-founded Billionaire Boys Club together back in 2003.Still, despite Nigo’s clear knack for co-creating, up until tonight the only collaboration the designer had explored during his tenure at Kenzo was with the house’s founder himself—well, with his archive. Contrary to popular belief, Nigo is, he said, actually “quite opposed to collaborations in fashion.” He explained that, after taking the top job at Kenzo, he particularly wanted to avoid one from the start in order to establish his tenure. But it’s difficult not to cave to expectations, and so tonight his spring 2024 men’s and women’s collections featured the work of his close friend, the Japanese graphic artist Verdy (who was also just announced as Blackpink’s latest artistic director).Now was the right time to play that card. As Nigo looks to put a forceful signature on Kenzo (and perhaps add more momentum, judging by the amount of celebrities at this show and its very Instagrammable location at the Passerelle Debilly at the foot of the Eiffel Tower), it was only apt to go all out. Plus, after some time at the helm of Kenzo, he now has the space to do that.One thing that has captured Nigo’s interest of late is the fact that city pop, the Japanese pop music movement that emerged in the ’70s and peaked in the ’80s, recently regained mainstream global popularity. This tension between the authentically Japanese and its Western reinterpretations is something that Nigo deftly navigates in his work. This was put on display in this collection as he revisited the clothes from the time when he first experienced the music in the context of a now global brand.In fact, to aptly recontextualize his inspiration, Nigo explored both his own archive and the Kenzo one from the time when city pop first emerged and looked at how those very same items and styles have been reinterpreted since. Where this translated best was in the tailoring—which remains his most convincing effort at Kenzo—as he mixed elements of Japanese tailoring with details and proportions from the time.
A highlight was a pair of wide-pleated dress shorts hybridized with a hakama, and a kimono-like double breasted pinstripe jacket.Verdy contributed with a reimagined “Kenzo Paris” logo, which was placed on the back of jackets and cleverly used as a binding tape on some tailoring. Elsewhere, a rose print reinterpreted from the Kenzo archive and placed over pastel summer fabrics offered lightness to the lineup. Denim remains a Nigo strong suit, as does his cool and unbothered—while still intentional—menswear. Still, though this collection offered a clearer point of view in the women’s space—with decisively sexy semi-sheer knits and short shifts—the direction still seems unresolved.It’s hard to not see the parallel between Nigo’s show tonight and Williams’s early this week. While the bridge setting may be a simple coincidence, the magnitude is not. We’ve entered a new era of fashion as entertainment, where editors and writers are taking as many notes about the famous names in attendance as we are about the clothes. But still, among all the noise, Nigo continues to do nothing other than his own thing. To his credit, the many online trends spreading over the runways this season (i.e. quiet luxury) were nowhere to be found on his runway. He’s four seasons in, and judging by this outing, Nigo’s all warmed up.
23 June 2023
Pharrell Williams arrived at tonight’s show wearing a full Kenzo look by his dear friend and close collaborator Nigo—accessorized with a fresh-from-the-oven (and runway) yellow duffle from his own debut collection. It was a full circle moment. Those aware of the lore will know that one of Williams’s first formal forays into fashion way back when came by Nigo’s hand when they co-founded Billionaire Boys Club together back in 2003.Still, despite Nigo’s clear knack for co-creating, up until tonight the only collaboration the designer had explored during his tenure at Kenzo was with the house’s founder himself—well, with his archive. Contrary to popular belief, Nigo is, he said, actually “quite opposed to collaborations in fashion.” He explained that, after taking the top job at Kenzo, he particularly wanted to avoid one from the start in order to establish his tenure. But it’s difficult not to cave to expectations, and so tonight his spring 2024 men’s and women’s collections featured the work of his close friend, the Japanese graphic artist Verdy (who was also just announced as Blackpink’s latest artistic director).Now was the right time to play that card. As Nigo looks to put a forceful signature on Kenzo (and perhaps add more momentum, judging by the amount of celebrities at this show and its very Instagrammable location at the Passerelle Debilly at the foot of the Eiffel Tower), it was only apt to go all out. Plus, after some time at the helm of Kenzo, he now has the space to do that.One thing that has captured Nigo’s interest of late is the fact that city pop, the Japanese pop music movement that emerged in the ’70s and peaked in the ’80s, recently regained mainstream global popularity. This tension between the authentically Japanese and its Western reinterpretations is something that Nigo deftly navigates in his work. This was put on display in this collection as he revisited the clothes from the time when he first experienced the music in the context of a now global brand.In fact, to aptly recontextualize his inspiration, Nigo explored both his own archive and the Kenzo one from the time when city pop first emerged and looked at how those very same items and styles have been reinterpreted since. Where this translated best was in the tailoring—which remains his most convincing effort at Kenzo—as he mixed elements of Japanese tailoring with details and proportions from the time.
A highlight was a pair of wide-pleated dress shorts hybridized with a hakama, and a kimono-like double breasted pinstripe jacket.Verdy contributed with a reimagined “Kenzo Paris” logo, which was placed on the back of jackets and cleverly used as a binding tape on some tailoring. Elsewhere, a rose print reinterpreted from the Kenzo archive and placed over pastel summer fabrics offered lightness to the lineup. Denim remains a Nigo strong suit, as does his cool and unbothered—while still intentional—menswear. Still, though this collection offered a clearer point of view in the women’s space—with decisively sexy semi-sheer knits and short shifts—the direction still seems unresolved.It’s hard to not see the parallel between Nigo’s show tonight and Williams’s early this week. While the bridge setting may be a simple coincidence, the magnitude is not. We’ve entered a new era of fashion as entertainment, where editors and writers are taking as many notes about the famous names in attendance as we are about the clothes. But still, among all the noise, Nigo continues to do nothing other than his own thing. To his credit, the many online trends spreading over the runways this season (i.e. quiet luxury) were nowhere to be found on his runway. He’s four seasons in, and judging by this outing, Nigo’s all warmed up.
23 June 2023
One year in, and Nigo’s vision of Kenzo—from what you can parse—is gaining momentum. Parent company LVMH would not have booked out a 1,000 seat concert hall and plentifully supplied after party—with promised guest performers this reviewer sadly had to skip—were it not. This third chapter of the Nigo x Kenzo story also felt like a turning point: the moment at which the hired hand ceased his (absolutely rightly respectful and proper) emphasis on the founder and began to bring himself more forcefully into the picture.Nigo’s Human Made collections have referenced The Beatles plentifully in the past, and tonight the Fab Four took central stage via a pastel suited female Japanese string quartet who belted out the good stuff;Sergeant Pepper’s, Can’t Buy Me Love, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, All You Need Is Love, and more. The Beatles split the atom of 20th century culture, imbibing blues and LSD in quick time to fast-forward us to postmodernity as fast as Barthes could cipher it. Tonight, chilled beneath his newsboy, Nigo followed in that wake, developing a collection that was deeply rooted in mod culture but which also enveloped Kenzo’s and his own through that deeply impressive Japanese capacity to brilliantly editorialize clothes.English country couture and its mod unravelling played against Japanese tailoring, kimono inspired, above hakama-style traditional dress trousers. There was, Nigo conceded happily in a preview, a strong dose of post-Pirates Westwood in the underlying instinct to remix through disruption. The stitched patterns were sourced, Nigo said through his translator, from the etching used on sashiko jackets traditionally used to practice Kendo. But it was all wrapped up with other factors; US workwear, UK punk, post-military (in an incredible khaki goldfish-embroidered kimono bomber look), contemporary workwear and more. The only criticism was that—perhaps not unlike Kenzo himself—Nigo’s mastery of the feminine aspect seemed unsure: it was either menswear-sourced templates or frills and shirring: reductive. Some points seemed understandably commercial, like the dad-sneakers Nigo said he had worked long and hard to be as authentically dad—not “fashion-sneaker”—as possible.I was up on a stage surrounded by superstars during this show, but ended up focused on noting all the pieces I’d love to have: those fleeces, that kimono-bomber, that checked long liner-coat, those sneaks! Kenzo is exciting; the love you make.
20 January 2023
This sophomore collection by Nigo for Kenzo marked a double graduation. The first was that—as he observed via his trusty translator Toby, post-show—Nigo is increasingly finding the levels and detail of denim (now all sourced from Japan) and workwear production here much more aligned with his expectations as a connoisseur, thanks to evolution within Kenzo. Said Toby: “He’s got access to the fabrics he wants. Everything's still being made here, but he feels that they understand his vibe and then they’re also adding to it with their own sensibility.”Secondly, a graduation is what this show was staged to remind us of. Nigo said he’d used the concept of a passing out ceremony—inspired by a 1980s show by Kenzo Takada based on a sports day—in order to present an otherwise diverse group of dressed characters under the same banner: this was Kenzo’s class of ’23.Nigo is still understandably steeping himself in the archive of the house’s founder. Waistcoats came patched with an array of long-defunct labels—including for Kenzo Jeans and Jungle—that were reproductions of original Takada-era graphic designs. Similarly the patched naif animalia pieces were based on an archive design. And the womenswear especially—with the notable exception of a wabash and hickory striped denim liner dress in look 19, and look 16’s fabulous unwashed swing skirt—seemed deeply rooted in Takada’s oeuvre.Although this was a continuation of last season’s collection—in honor of Takada’s own annual cycle—a new interjection was the armada of naval inspired pieces. As well as literal-ish sailor wear, the maritime scarf was ingeniously integrated into the house’s revived tailoring as jacket lapels. The maritime aesthetic is deeply embedded in contemporary Japanese dress—just look at the school uniforms—but it also served as an interesting point of connection in a collection that was produced by a French house, conceived by a Japanese designer, and which took fundamental points of inspiration from Americana: conceptually, these were much-traveled clothes.Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, Jaden Smith and Ghali were among the latest crop of stars here to see Nigo’s work for themselves. In what I counted as his third show of the menswear week, Alexandre Arnault was here too, wearing sturdy New Balance 911s like all pro show attendees do.
One marginally less youthful fan of the collection was Sidney Toledano, the Chairman and CEO of LVMH Fashion Group, who recalled fondly backstage that his first ever jacket was by Takada, then told Nigo he would wear one of the collection’s woozy regimental striped suits to the group’s next board meeting. This was a collection with pan-generational appeal that spanned continents and cultures: word is that the sales are already reflecting the new wind Nigo has brought to Kenzo.
26 June 2022
This sophomore collection by Nigo for Kenzo marked a double graduation. The first was that—as he observed via his trusty translator Toby, post-show—Nigo is increasingly finding the levels and detail of denim (now all sourced from Japan) and workwear production here much more aligned with his expectations as a connoisseur, thanks to evolution within Kenzo. Said Toby: “He’s got access to the fabrics he wants. Everything's still being made here, but he feels that they understand his vibe and then they’re also adding to it with their own sensibility.”Secondly, a graduation is what this show was staged to remind us of. Nigo said he’d used the concept of a passing out ceremony—inspired by a 1980s show by Kenzo Takada based on a sports day—in order to present an otherwise diverse group of dressed characters under the same banner: this was Kenzo’s class of ’23.Nigo is still understandably steeping himself in the archive of the house’s founder. Waistcoats came patched with an array of long-defunct labels—including for Kenzo Jeans and Jungle—that were reproductions of original Takada-era graphic designs. Similarly the patched naif animalia pieces were based on an archive design. And the womenswear especially—with the notable exception of a wabash and hickory striped denim liner dress in look 19, and look 16’s fabulous unwashed swing skirt—seemed deeply rooted in Takada’s oeuvre.Although this was a continuation of last season’s collection—in honor of Takada’s own annual cycle—a new interjection was the armada of naval inspired pieces. As well as literal-ish sailor wear, the maritime scarf was ingeniously integrated into the house’s revived tailoring as jacket lapels. The maritime aesthetic is deeply embedded in contemporary Japanese dress—just look at the school uniforms—but it also served as an interesting point of connection in a collection that was produced by a French house, conceived by a Japanese designer, and which took fundamental points of inspiration from Americana: conceptually, these were much-traveled clothes.Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, Jaden Smith and Ghali were among the latest crop of stars here to see Nigo’s work for themselves. In what I counted as his third show of the menswear week, Alexandre Arnault was here too, wearing sturdy New Balance 911s like all pro show attendees do.
One marginally less youthful fan of the collection was Sidney Toledano, the Chairman and CEO of LVMH Fashion Group, who recalled fondly backstage that his first ever jacket was by Takada, then told Nigo he would wear one of the collection’s woozy regimental striped suits to the group’s next board meeting. This was a collection with pan-generational appeal that spanned continents and cultures: word is that the sales are already reflecting the new wind Nigo has brought to Kenzo.
26 June 2022
Pharrell Williams was here, wearing some cute diamond- and emerald-edged sunglasses he’d designed for Tiffany. Alongside him Kanye West and Julia Fox doubled up in double denim (hers by Daniel Roseberry at Schiap). Pusha T, Shygirl, J Balvin, Gunna, Big Matthew, Sik-k, and Tyler, the Creator were just down the row. This made for an extremely strong crowd at a Sunday morning show that effectively marked the end of this Omicron-quieted season of menswear and augured the unfolding of couture.In part, they were here for the house of Kenzo. All of them (and us) were seated in the beautiful but chilly (and suddenly weed-fumed) Galerie Vivienne. It was here in 1970 that a small gallery unit with cheap rent was snapped up by 31-year-old Kenzo Takada, who had arrived circuitously from Tokyo five years previously with the dream to emulate Yves Saint Laurent and become a fashion designer.Shortly after moving in and painting the interior after Rousseau, Kenzo threw his first show here under the name Jungle Jap (which he changed once discovering the pejorative weight of ‘Jap’ in the US). The collection was cut and sewn and painted with fabrics brought from a Montmartre market. As Kenzo later recalled: “I was looking for some kind of identity as an outsider, so I wanted to bring something very Japanese into it, and that meant textiles with a lot of color and pattern.” By 1993, when he sold his company for $80 million to what would become LVMH, Kenzo had developed that formula to become one of the most beloved and distinct designers operating in Paris. He sadly passed away in late 2020 after being laid low by Covid, but had continued to work on new projects— including a really excellent retrospective book of sketches and photography—until shortly before.Let’s be honest though: for the last few seasons there hasn’t been much buzz at Kenzo. Yes there was that period, starting a full decade ago, when the Kenzo-coded tigersweatshirtsproduced under the excellent Carol Lim and Humberto Leon went from cool to hot to way overcooked. But since their time here ended in 2019 the house has been quiet.What filled it with noise today was the arrival of new creative director Nigo. As excellently illustrated in the preview/profile yesterday here bySteff Yotka, Nigo’s creativity and clout—and of course his personal passion for and parallels with Kenzo—make him a serendipitously synchronized recruit for LVMH.
In fact way before this debut collection’s first look went out, he had already done the French group a great service: as Sidney Toledano recounted toLaure Guilbaultof Vogue Business at the show: it was Nigo who first introduced Virgil Abloh to Michael Burke of Louis Vuitton.
23 January 2022
Pharrell Williams was here, wearing some cute diamond-and-emerald-edged sunglasses he’d designed for Tiffany. Alongside him, Kanye West and Julia Fox doubled up in double denim (hers by Daniel Roseberry at Schiap). Pusha T, Shygirl, J Balvin, Gunna, Big Matthew, Sik-K, and Tyler, The Creator, were just down the row. This made for an extremely strong crowd at a Sunday morning show that effectively marked the end of this omicron-quieted season of menswear and augured the unfolding of couture.In part, they were here for the house of Kenzo. All of them (and us) were seated in the beautiful but chilly (and suddenly weed-fumed) Galerie Vivienne. It was here, in 1970, that a small gallery unit with cheap rent was snapped up by 31-year-old Kenzo Takada, who had arrived circuitously from Tokyo five years previously with the dream to emulate Yves Saint Laurent and become a fashion designer.Shortly after moving in and painting the interior after Rousseau, Kenzo threw his first show here under the name Jungle Jap (which he changed once discovering the pejorative weight of ‘Jap’ in the US). The collection was cut, sewn and painted with fabrics brought from a Montmartre market. As Kenzo later recalled: “I was looking for some kind of identity as an outsider, so I wanted to bring something very Japanese into it, and that meant textiles with a lot of color and pattern.” By 1993, when he sold his company for $80 million to what would become LVMH, Kenzo had developed that formula to become one of the most beloved and distinct designers operating in Paris. He sadly passed away in late 2020 after being laid low by Covid-19, but had continued to work on new projects— including a really excellent retrospective book of sketches and photography—until shortly before.Let’s be honest, though: for the last few seasons there hasn’t been much buzz at Kenzo. Yes, there was that period, starting a full decade ago, when the Kenzo-coded tigersweatshirtsproduced under the excellent Carol Lim and Humberto Leon went from cool to hot to way overcooked. But since their time here ended in 2019, the house has been quiet.What filled it with noise today was the arrival of new creative director Nigo. As excellently illustrated in the preview/profile yesterday here bySteff Yotka, Nigo’s creativity and clout—and of course his personal passion for and parallels with Kenzo—make him a serendipitously synchronized recruit for LVMH.
In fact way before this debut collection’s first look went out, he had already done the French group a great service: as Sidney Toledano recounted toLaure Guilbaultof Vogue Business at the show: it was Nigo who first introduced Virgil Abloh to Michael Burke of Louis Vuitton.
23 January 2022
When Felipe Oliveira Baptista joined Kenzo in the summer of 2019, its founder confided in him: “Fashion seems so complicated now. I couldn’t do it.” To Kenzō Takada, who sold his house to LVMH in 1993, fashion had to come from the heart rather than the market department. “Intuition is a banned word at fashion houses these days. It’s as if there’s no space for it. But there was a lot of that in him,” Oliveira Baptista said on a video call from Paris this week, reflecting on the legacy of Takada, who died in October last year aged 81. The sentiment would lay the foundation for the Portuguese designer’s new era at Kenzo: “It was the best piece of advice.”Sticking to those values, the collection Oliveira Baptista dedicated to Takada this season didn’t reissue a single garment or print from the master’s greatest hits of the 1970s and ’80s. Instead, the new custodian paid tribute by evoking the founder’s presence through intuitive ideas. Silhouettes riffed on Takada’s most memorable moments through the spherical and orbital, the folkloric, and the cross-cultural. Balancing, as he does, the artisanal with the durable and sporty, Oliveira Baptista simplified and contemporized materials, turning Takada’s geometric lines into a kind of streetwear for a 21st-century Kenzo.Throughout, he painted the garments in the things the founder loved most: pansies, tulips, hydrangeas, and stripes. Seen from Takada’s cloud, it could have been one of his old shows, shot in the Cirque d’Hiver, where he often presented his collections, with an original soundtrack by Planningtorock (“Kenzō, always!”) and models dancing in a harmony of shapes, colors, and patterns. Close-up, it was bursting with new life in a performance-y, vivid way that often felt almost digital, but in technique rather than aspiration. Refreshingly, Oliveira Baptista’s work for Kenzo doesn’t show many signs of pandering to a cynical social media-driven shopping culture. Takada can rest assured.Before he started working on the collection, Oliveira Baptista was given access to footage of all the old Kenzo shows, which had been undergoing restoration at the time of his arrival. “In the first two seasons, I had only seen the photos and the clothes themselves, so I was struck by the magic of the shows: the intuition, the freedom, how the clothes were always moving. It made me want to portray the movement, the comfort, and the freedom these clothes give you. That’s very much what Kenzo stood for,” he explained.
All those things felt like good timing for a post-lockdown proposal.
26 March 2021
With premonition that couldn’t have been planned, the eeriest experience last season occurred at the Kenzo show. Editors who had rushed from Milan to Paris like we were on the run from the pandemic turned up to Felipe Oliveira Baptista’s show to find a human-size plastic tunnel system erected within a rose garden. There, guests were let in through one hatch, which was then dramatically shut and sealed before the next hatch was opened, as if we were going into sci-fi quarantine. For his sophomore collection for Kenzo this season, set in the same garden, the designer wanted to reuse the tunnel. “But the company that built it went bankrupt because of COVID,” he said during a preview. The tragicomedy spoke for itself.Like his first show—its set designed before anyone expected the virus—he didn’t specifically intend for his new proposal to feel unnerving. Oliveira Baptista, a nature obsessive with roots in the luxuriant hills of the Azores, wants to instill his work with the harmonious and optimistic aspects of the environment, themes that are also core to Kenzo. He strictly uses recyclable plastic, is working with WWF to double the global population of tigers (Kenzo’s trademark), and has a number of other environmentally conscious projects in the works. The veiled beekeeper suits that opened his collection, however, inevitably felt moreContagionthanHoneyland, the 2019 documentary about a beekeeper in rural Macedonia, which served as a reference.The film portrays the contrast between its protagonist, a lady who respects the bees and only ever takes the honey she needs to survive—“half for me, and half for you”—and her industrious neighbors, who deplete the natural resources and end up killing the bees. “It’s one of the most ancient collaborations between man and nature,” Oliveira Baptista said, explaining that the image of the beekeeper came to him amid what he sees as a moment in which humankind is bargaining with the ecosystem. “I wanted to express something about the fragility of the situation we are in. Everyone goes to the low of the situation—fear and anxiety—but we go to the high: dreaming of optimism and a future and going back to the things we’ve been missing.”That may be the case, but the elements with which he imbued his collection felt more geared toward survival than picnics—even if there was a jar of honey on guests’ seats. An adaptable coat with multi-pocketing could be wrapped up into itself and transformed into a bum bag.
Out of the zipped bottom of round leather bags came a separate giant shopping bag. A cocoon coat with a caped hood layered over its body easily tapped into said sci-fi quarantine vibe, or perhaps the silhouette of a killer in a 1990s horror film. And floral prints from the Kenzo archives, which had been faded to look clinical and blurry, evoked the effect of flowers sticking to a window in the rain, like something you might have seen in confinement.Oliveira Baptista’s perhaps inadvertent tendencies for the dystopian serve to his advantage. If dark undercurrents didn’t make their way into his delicate veils, lace raincoats, and little summer dresses, they wouldn’t put up any resistance to the flower-power universe of Kenzo. Rather than cute, there was a feeling of self-protection about his collection that hit an obvious nerve in a time when the environment is fighting back, giving us a taste of our own medicine. “We don’t even know what to be afraid of and what to believe in. The whole idea of protection becomes abstract,” the designer said, summing up the broad spectrum of sociopolitical current affairs.
30 September 2020
With premonition that couldn’t have been planned, the eeriest experience last season occurred at the Kenzo show. Editors who had rushed from Milan to Paris like we were on the run from the pandemic turned up to Felipe Oliveira Baptista’s show to find a human-size plastic tunnel system erected within a rose garden. There, guests were let in through one hatch, which was then dramatically shut and sealed before the next hatch was opened, as if we were going into sci-fi quarantine. For his sophomore collection for Kenzo this season, set in the same garden, the designer wanted to reuse the tunnel. “But the company that built it went bankrupt because of COVID,” he said during a preview. The tragicomedy spoke for itself.Like his first show—its set designed before anyone expected the virus—he didn’t specifically intend for his new proposal to feel unnerving. Oliveira Baptista, a nature obsessive with roots in the luxuriant hills of the Azores, wants to instill his work with the harmonious and optimistic aspects of the environment, themes that are also core to Kenzo. He strictly uses recyclable plastic, is working with WWF to double the global population of tigers (Kenzo’s trademark), and has a number of other environmentally conscious projects in the works. The veiled beekeeper suits that opened his collection, however, inevitably felt moreContagionthanHoneyland, the 2019 documentary about a beekeeper in rural Macedonia, which served as a reference.The film portrays the contrast between its protagonist, a lady who respects the bees and only ever takes the honey she needs to survive—“half for me, and half for you”—and her industrious neighbors, who deplete the natural resources and end up killing the bees. “It’s one of the most ancient collaborations between man and nature,” Oliveira Baptista said, explaining that the image of the beekeeper came to him amid what he sees as a moment in which humankind is bargaining with the ecosystem. “I wanted to express something about the fragility of the situation we are in. Everyone goes to the low of the situation—fear and anxiety—but we go to the high: dreaming of optimism and a future and going back to the things we’ve been missing.”That may be the case, but the elements with which he imbued his collection felt more geared toward survival than picnics—even if there was a jar of honey on guests’ seats. An adaptable coat with multi-pocketing could be wrapped up into itself and transformed into a bum bag.
Out of the zipped bottom of round leather bags came a separate giant shopping bag. A cocoon coat with a caped hood layered over its body easily tapped into said sci-fi quarantine vibe, or perhaps the silhouette of a killer in a 1990s horror film. And floral prints from the Kenzo archives, which had been faded to look clinical and blurry, evoked the effect of flowers sticking to a window in the rain, like something you might have seen in confinement.Oliveira Baptista’s perhaps inadvertent tendencies for the dystopian serve to his advantage. If dark undercurrents didn’t make their way into his delicate veils, lace raincoats, and little summer dresses, they wouldn’t put up any resistance to the flower-power universe of Kenzo. Rather than cute, there was a feeling of self-protection about his collection that hit an obvious nerve in a time when the environment is fighting back, giving us a taste of our own medicine. “We don’t even know what to be afraid of and what to believe in. The whole idea of protection becomes abstract,” the designer said, summing up the broad spectrum of sociopolitical current affairs.
30 September 2020
Felipe Oliveira Baptista was appointed creative director of Kenzo last July, and today marked his first outing for the French house. The designer’s résumé runs the gamut of couture and sportswear; he was most recently at the helm of Lacoste.Speaking before the show in Paris, Baptista pointed to the brand’s nomadic spirit as a guiding principle for his debut. His initial conversations with founder Kenzo Takada led him to explore references that were both archival and personal.The show opened on a relatively somber note with an oversized tailored ensemble that was black from head to toe. In keeping with the current trend for face-obscuring hats and head coverings, there was an array of bonnets, headscarves, and hoods. The Portuguese designer’s most dramatic take on the look was inspired by his upbringing on the Azores Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, where the traditional hooded garb has been passed down from mother to daughter for generations.Baptista has a natural affinity for leather, and he reworked several classic outerwear shapes with a more conceptual line, including an ’80s-style shearling. Save for tonal embroideries of Kenzo’s distinctive tiger-head logo, the slate was swept clean of any branding. There was a more deliberate nod to the Kenzo tiger with a collage of painterly feline prints made in collaboration with the estate of the celebrated midcentury Portuguese artist Julio Pomar that appeared on snap-button tunics and felted sweaters.The most striking motifs in the lineup were pulled from the brand’s extensive catalog of floral and camouflage prints. The abstract roses that showed up on sweeping parachute midi dresses and ponchos added a sense of vibrancy to the collection. As he begins to build out a new vision for Kenzo, Baptista would be wise to mine that optimistic mood further.
26 February 2020
For their final show as the creative heads at Kenzo, it seemed fitting that Carol Lim and Humberto Leon returned to the theme of water. Over the past eight years—and what electrifying, purpose-driven, digital-savvy years they’ve been—these native Californians have remained close to the ocean, whether drawing attention to overfishing and arctic surfing or infusing collections with surf and beach vibes. At the Bercy Arena today, it is no exaggeration to say that the runway felt like the center of a parted sea, with waves of guests rising on either side—some 7,000 people including the usual makeup of press, friends, and industry as well as students, charity groups, and employees joined by their families.Breaking from the usual preshow Q&A, a press text substituted for face time with Lim and Leon. It noted how the collections drew inspiration from the female free divers in Japan known asama(as an aside, the Korean equivalent of these fisherwomen,haenyeo, informed the current Off-White Resort collection). The designers evoked these “last mermaids” through all manners of marine reference: neoprene suiting; diving gear reimagined as outerwear; sailor collars on jackets; filmy fabrics in underwater hues; shirts patterned with shrimp or else a jacquard of woodblock-style mermaids; fishnet sleeves dotted with pearls; color-blocked scuba-style sandals; and dressy pieces dripping with aquatic embellishments. Most of the looks will be fun to wear, with only a few outliers drifting toward camp. But hey, isn’t that au courant these days?In any case, when Solange Knowles appeared as the halftime entertainment, her voice echoed through the space as though we were all underwater. T.S. Eliot once wrote of mermaids singing, a sublime moment marred by melancholy. But this was conceived as an uplifting celebration in which a troupe of dancers wore previous collections, and Lim and Leon brought out their kids for a final walk, smiling through it all. Their imprint on the house—the best-selling Tiger merch and giant eye icons; the short films and reaffirming messaging; the engagement and awareness—has been immense. A giantmercito this incomparable duo for every day they applied their imagination to Kenzo. What a splash!
23 June 2019
For their final show as the creative heads at Kenzo, it seemed fitting that Carol Lim and Humberto Leon returned to the theme of water. Over the past eight years—and what electrifying, purpose-driven, digital-savvy years they’ve been—these native Californians have remained close to the ocean, whether drawing attention to overfishing and arctic surfing or infusing collections with surf and beach vibes. At the Bercy Arena today, it is no exaggeration to say that the runway felt like the center of a parted sea, with waves of guests rising on either side—some 7,000 people including the usual makeup of press, friends, and industry as well as students, charity groups, and employees joined by their families.Breaking from the usual preshow Q&A, a press text substituted for face time with Lim and Leon. It noted how the collections drew inspiration from the female free divers in Japan known asama(as an aside, the Korean equivalent of these fisherwomen,haenyeo,informed the current Off-White Resort collection). The designers evoked these “last mermaids” through all manners of marine reference: neoprene suiting; diving gear reimagined as outerwear; sailor collars on jackets; filmy fabrics in underwater hues; shirts patterned with shrimp or else a jacquard of woodblock-style mermaids; fishnet sleeves dotted with pearls; color-blocked scuba-style sandals; and dressy pieces dripping with aquatic embellishments. Most of the looks will be fun to wear, with only a few outliers drifting toward camp. But hey, isn’t that au courant these days?In any case, when Solange Knowles appeared as the halftime entertainment, her voice echoed through the space as though we were all underwater. T.S. Eliot once wrote of mermaids singing, a sublime moment marred by melancholy. But this was conceived as an uplifting celebration in which a troupe of dancers wore previous collections, and Lim and Leon brought out their kids for a final walk, smiling through it all. Their imprint on the house—the best-selling Tiger merch and giant eye icons; the short films and reaffirming messaging; the engagement and awareness—has been immense. A giantmercito this incomparable duo for every day they applied their imagination to Kenzo. What a splash!
23 June 2019
Ayahuasca hasn’t become the zeitgeist-y drug of Paris the same way it’s reportedly been embraced by people in Silicon Valley and Brooklyn. Today, in the bowels of the Louvre’s shopping concourse, the Kenzo show conjured up a stylized version of its hallucinogenic effects for guests—and it made for quite the trip.First the men’s, then the women’s collections played out against the backdrop of wildly illustrated murals by the late artist and shaman Pablo Amaringo, with music that was traditional yet trancelike. Many of the visions were intensely saturated and collided urban with expedition elements—hot pink suits, pinstripe outerwear that glinted silver, polar fleece in optical patterns, and a whirling atmospheric motif that was unearthed from the archive.But the real point of departure actually emerged from an idea very close to home: Humberto Leon’s father’s Chinese-Peruvian heritage. In the mid-19th century, people of Chinese ancestry settled in Peru; they are referred to as Tusán and they now number in the millions. Leon said he still has family there and flew them over for the occasion.They would have likely recognized some of the traditional garments, creatively updated: pollera skirts, now boasting drawstrings and worn with puffer jackets; hot pink ponchos in waterproof technical fabrics; and blanket plaids as workwear shirts or sweaterdresses. The season’s statement print appropriated the bags used to import rice; pairing it with pieces in papery leather elevated it to art party attire. The same could be said of all the pieces bordered in brightly colored faux fur—floppy flats included, although it’s worth considering they might lose their novelty (and their brilliant veneer) quite fast.When the collections considered the references in an everyday way, however, the looks often proved dynamic. The new Tali handbag, with its blinking-eye hardware, winked back to Leon and Carol Lim’s blockbuster eye graphic from ’13, and compared with the serious lady bags elsewhere, it was fun and fresh. As they are so identifiable, it will be interesting to see who ends up carrying them.Most interesting of all was how Leon and Lim connected the personal nature of these collections back to the activism that they are usually so comfortable expressing. But instead of a call to action, they seemed to touch upon the movement of peoples as a fully integrated, multicultural adventure.
Leon said that everything crystallized organically: “We kind of evolve as the world evolves. And when I think about things I feel are important to us, it’s nice to talk about them with genuine context.” And, no doubt, a clear mind.
20 January 2019
Ayahuasca hasn’t become the zeitgeist-y drug of Paris the same way it’s reportedly been embraced by people in Silicon Valley and Brooklyn. Today, in the bowels of the Louvre’s shopping concourse, the Kenzo show conjured up a stylized version of its hallucinogenic effects for guests—and it made for quite the trip.First the men’s, then the women’s collections played out against the backdrop of wildly illustrated murals by the late artist and shaman Pablo Amaringo, with music that was traditional yet trancelike. Many of the visions were intensely saturated and collided urban with expedition elements—hot pink suits, pinstripe outerwear that glinted silver, polar fleece in optical patterns, and a whirling atmospheric motif that was unearthed from the archive.But the real point of departure actually emerged from an idea very close to home: Humberto Leon’s father’s Chinese-Peruvian heritage. In the mid-19th century, people of Chinese ancestry settled in Peru; they are referred to as Tusán and they now number in the millions. Leon said he still has family there and flew them over for the occasion.They would have likely recognized some of the traditional garments, creatively updated: pollera skirts, now boasting drawstrings and worn with puffer jackets; hot pink ponchos in waterproof technical fabrics; and blanket plaids as workwear shirts or sweaterdresses. The season’s statement print appropriated the bags used to import rice; pairing it with pieces in papery leather elevated it to art party attire. The same could be said of all the pieces bordered in brightly colored faux fur—floppy flats included, although it’s worth considering they might lose their novelty (and their brilliant veneer) quite fast.When the collections considered the references in an everyday way, however, the looks often proved dynamic. The new Tali handbag, with its blinking-eye hardware, winked back to Leon and Carol Lim’s blockbuster eye graphic from ’13, and compared with the serious lady bags elsewhere, it was fun and fresh. As they are so identifiable, it will be interesting to see who ends up carrying them.Most interesting of all was how Leon and Lim connected the personal nature of these collections back to the activism that they are usually so comfortable expressing. But instead of a call to action, they seemed to touch upon the movement of peoples as a fully integrated, multicultural adventure.
Leon said that everything crystallized organically: “We kind of evolve as the world evolves. And when I think about things I feel are important to us, it’s nice to talk about them with genuine context.” And, no doubt, a clear mind.
20 January 2019
As the final show on the men’s calendar in Paris, and on a day widely celebrated as Gay Pride elsewhere in the world (here, the parade is next Saturday), the Kenzo crew envisioned an underground garden party where guys and girls congregated for some sort of vibrant and splashy special occasion. Accordingly, they dressed up: in color-blocked ladylike looks and rakish fluorescent check suits; in semi-sheer flounced dresses or patterned knit tops with extra-roomy pants; and in various ratios of electric blue, saffron, magenta, and bottle green. As in previous seasons, the event first presented the women’s lineup followed by the men’s, and truth be told, this template could benefit from both a reshuffling and an edit. But with the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a talented Chicago band, maintaining a steady groove, the start-to-finish performance portrayed Kenzo at its best. Credit, of course, goes to Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, who interpreted their theme with wide creative license. “It’s traditional ceremony but twisted,” said Leon, who was dressed in the collection’s hard-to-miss fluoro yellow nylon dress patterned with black roses. Think: femme fatale goes to Burning Man.Back when Leon and Lim first imposed their plucky vision on the brand, graphic sweatshirts boasting a roaring tiger made waves; here, it was a graphic guipure lace of phoenixes. The pivot to sporty then and polish now is revealing; we tend to think of Kenzo as globally minded, eclectic, and inclusive more than trendsetting. Yet when its captains are steering the brand toward hybrid tailoring (all those great jackets backed with drawstring nylon) and extroverted cocktail attire (sculpted sleeves, opera gloves, bejeweled tops, slim python-print and check pantsuits), its youthful followers are likely to scan the more grown-up offering and opt in. For them, all these bygone Kenzo codes will look fresh; the show’s vibe exhilarating. “What we like to create is a moment in time, a memory you can take with you,” said Lim. Quite literally, a decades-old invitation from when Kenzo showed in the Louvre courtyard was reborn as a rubberized shopping tote.
24 June 2018
As the final show on the men’s calendar in Paris, and on a day widely celebrated as Gay Pride elsewhere in the world (here, the parade is next Saturday), the Kenzo crew envisioned an underground garden party where guys and girls congregated for some sort of vibrant and splashy special occasion. Accordingly, they dressed up: in color-blocked ladylike looks and rakish fluorescent check suits; in semi-sheer flounced dresses or patterned knit tops with extra-roomy pants; and in various ratios of electric blue, saffron, magenta, and bottle green. As in previous seasons, the event first presented the women’s lineup followed by the men’s, and truth be told, this template could benefit from both a reshuffling and an edit. But with the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a talented Chicago band, maintaining a steady groove, the start-to-finish performance portrayed Kenzo at its best. Credit, of course, goes to Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, who interpreted their theme with wide creative license. “It’s traditional ceremony but twisted,” said Leon, who was dressed in the collection’s hard-to-miss fluoro yellow nylon dress patterned with black roses. Think: femme fatale goes to Burning Man.Back when Leon and Lim first imposed their plucky vision on the brand, graphic sweatshirts boasting a roaring tiger made waves; here, it was a graphic guipure lace of phoenixes. The pivot to sporty then and polish now is revealing; we tend to think of Kenzo as globally minded, eclectic, and inclusive more than trendsetting. Yet when its captains are steering the brand toward hybrid tailoring (all those great jackets backed with drawstring nylon) and extroverted cocktail attire (sculpted sleeves, opera gloves, bejeweled tops, slim python-print and check pantsuits), its youthful followers are likely to scan the more grown-up offering and opt in. For them, all these bygone Kenzo codes will look fresh; the show’s vibe exhilarating. “What we like to create is a moment in time, a memory you can take with you,” said Lim. Quite literally, a decades-old invitation from when Kenzo showed in the Louvre courtyard was reborn as a rubberized shopping tote.
24 June 2018
Forget the standard page of program notes or mood board; Carol Lim and Humberto Leon explained tonight’s show with a loosely autobiographical film shot and projected in real time. “We’re going full meta this season!” Lim enthused in the midst of a backstage scene as large as any Hollywood production. Based on a true story from early in their friendship, when Leon made the momentous decision to bleach his hair, the ambitious, telenovela-style intermission between Kenzo’s men’s and women’s lineups played up the family reaction that ensued. “Asian melodramas are real,” Leon quipped, pausing to greet Courtney Love.Since arriving at Kenzo just over five years ago, the American duo has become an offbeat, upbeat presence on the Paris calendar, and for several seasons they’ve held the final men’s week spot with the unofficial expectation of a grand finale. It wasn’t all that long ago that a live-streaming fashion show felt like a big deal. Here, the 28 cameras piecing together this well-coordinated performance featuring a large cast of local, primarily Asian actors introduced a complex but undeniably personal dynamic to the experience.“The storytelling is the fundamental aspect of where we always begin,” said Leon. “Our collections are fully story-told, and then we carry that train of thought into the shows, so the shows [become] a big story that you’re watching come to life.” Whereas Leon’s bleached hair was the anecdotal starting point, a broader cult cinema message—fromChungking ExpresstoInterview With the Vampire—was what determined the clothes on a larger scale. The women’s lineup, for instance, featured Kenzo-campy movie posters as prints, irreverent ladylike looks—think femme fatale–in-training—and candy-foil party dresses. For the guys, high-waist pants with shrunken sweater vests, extroverted outerwear, and shimmery leisure suits signaled sufficient flair to excite the young Humbertos of today. In keeping with the flashback to 1998, the designers styled the looks with relevant archive pieces and customized the delicate floral motifs from old prints.Amidst the various film references, there were also traces of fashion references new and old. But much the same way the designers admitted to watching hundreds of movies together through the years, and the hazy soundtrack mash-up would have represented all the music moments shared, they’ve surely pored over hundreds of designer collections.
And all that culture was coalescing in a way that younger customers will discover for the first time. The collections were not without their awkward aspects. Yet as the characters danced to “Dreams” by the Cranberries, this seemed complementary to Lim and Leon’s own-your-style (and your bleached hair) message.
21 January 2018
Forget the standard page of program notes or mood board; Carol Lim and Humberto Leon explained tonight’s show with a loosely autobiographical film shot and projected in real time. “We’re going full meta this season!” Lim enthused in the midst of a backstage scene as large as any Hollywood production. Based on a true story from early in their friendship, when Leon made the momentous decision to bleach his hair, the ambitious, telenovela-style intermission between Kenzo’s men’s and women’s lineups played up the family reaction that ensued. “Asian melodramas are real,” Leon quipped, pausing to greet Courtney Love.Since arriving at Kenzo just over five years ago, the American duo has become an offbeat, upbeat presence on the Paris calendar, and for several seasons they’ve held the final men’s week spot with the unofficial expectation of a grand finale. It wasn’t all that long ago that a live-streaming fashion show felt like a big deal. Here, the 28 cameras piecing together this well-coordinated performance featuring a large cast of local, primarily Asian actors introduced a complex but undeniably personal dynamic to the experience.“The storytelling is the fundamental aspect of where we always begin,” said Leon. “Our collections are fully story-told, and then we carry that train of thought into the shows, so the shows [become] a big story that you’re watching come to life.” Whereas Leon’s bleached hair was the anecdotal starting point, a broader cult cinema message—fromChungking ExpresstoInterview With the Vampire—was what determined the clothes on a larger scale. The women’s lineup, for instance, featured Kenzo-campy movie posters as prints, irreverent ladylike looks—think femme fatale–in-training—and candy-foil party dresses. For the guys, high-waist pants with shrunken sweater vests, extroverted outerwear, and shimmery leisure suits signaled sufficient flair to excite the young Humbertos of today. In keeping with the flashback to 1998, the designers styled the looks with relevant archive pieces and customized the delicate floral motifs from old prints.Amidst the various film references, there were also traces of fashion references new and old. But much the same way the designers admitted to watching hundreds of movies together through the years, and the hazy soundtrack mash-up would have represented all the music moments shared, they’ve surely pored over hundreds of designer collections.
And all that culture was coalescing in a way that younger customers will discover for the first time. The collections were not without their awkward aspects. Yet as the characters danced to “Dreams” by the Cranberries, this seemed complementary to Lim and Leon’s own-your-style (and your bleached hair) message.
21 January 2018
Though Kenzo collections usually play out as large-scale shows, this one, a play in two acts within the courtyard of a landmark school, scaled new heights. As in, during the interlude separating the men’s and womenswear, aerial dancers rappelled down the wall, each couple performing a vertiginous pas de deux meant to evoke an imagined meeting of two specific muses, Sayoko Yamaguchi and Ryuichi Sakamoto. She, an international supermodel closely connected to Kenzo Takada, who passed away in 2007; he, a contemporary musician whose compositions are simultaneously sensitive and synthetic. Together, an Asian-inflected portrait merging past with present that motivated Carol Lim and Humberto Leon toward looks that were color-saturated, assertively styled, and downright spiffy. “We’ve gone political; we’ve addressed climate; we’ve gone on very topical things, and we wanted to almost step back and really have fun with this collection,” Leon explained. “I think we use our platform so instinctively for different reasons, and we just wanted to use it for joy.”As Act One began, guys crisscrossed the vast, patterned-tile courtyard sporting suits made distinctive by stacked pockets and chain ringed around the shoulder. Buttoned-up soon gave way to bold with high-waist, belted pants inspired by ’50s baseball trousers, which defined ultra-slim physiques that caught the eye even more than the vivid patterns supplied by Sakamoto himself. T-shirts fronted with album covers and sport jerseys declaring “Love will make a better you” spoke directly to those who expect the brand to keep turning out graphic, zeitgeist-y collectables.Act Two depicted girls whose looks toggled between vintage and future thanks to deconstructed patchwork dresses and optical separates like frilled bike shorts that looked great under boxy, double-breasted blazers and oversize shirting. The palette had an air of Memphis movement; the attitude felt like the photos of Daido Moriyama. Perhaps mere coincidence, but the vertical-striped socks called to mind Daniel Buren’s famous marble columns in the Palais Royal, not far from the brand’s HQ. Surrounding the collections’ stated muses seemed myriad other references that combined and clashed to dynamic effect.It’s taken until now to point out that the cadre of models was entirely Asian, some coming from Japan, China, and Korea for the show. “We took a really directional casting this season,” said Leon, pointing out the diversity within the framework.
This, he said, was their way of truly reflecting the muses as closely as possible. And when the two collections came together at the end, the two expressions did, indeed, coalesce—but more tellingly, the sheer number of looks (83 in total) was an expression of commercial breadth. As the final show on the Paris men’s calendar, the production made for quite the blockbuster finale, with or without the interlude. Had the students been there, it would have rocked their world.
26 June 2017
Though Kenzo collections usually play out as large-scale shows, this one, a play in two acts within the courtyard of a landmark school, scaled new heights. As in, during the interlude separating the men’s and womenswear, aerial dancers rappelled down the wall, each couple performing a vertiginous pas de deux meant to evoke an imagined meeting of two specific muses, Sayoko Yamaguchi and Ryuichi Sakamoto. She, an international supermodel closely connected to Kenzo Takada, who passed away in 2007; he, a contemporary musician whose compositions are simultaneously sensitive and synthetic. Together, an Asian-inflected portrait merging past with present that motivated Carol Lim and Humberto Leon toward looks that were color-saturated, assertively styled, and downright spiffy. “We’ve gone political; we’ve addressed climate; we’ve gone on very topical things, and we wanted to almost step back and really have fun with this collection,” Leon explained. “I think we use our platform so instinctively for different reasons, and we just wanted to use it for joy.”As Act One began, guys crisscrossed the vast, patterned-tile courtyard sporting suits made distinctive by stacked pockets and chain ringed around the shoulder. Buttoned-up soon gave way to bold with high-waist, belted pants inspired by ’50s baseball trousers, which defined ultra-slim physiques that caught the eye even more than the vivid patterns supplied by Sakamoto himself. T-shirts fronted with album covers and sport jerseys declaring “Love will make a better you” spoke directly to those who expect the brand to keep turning out graphic, zeitgeist-y collectables.Act Two depicted girls whose looks toggled between vintage and future thanks to deconstructed patchwork dresses and optical separates like frilled bike shorts that looked great under boxy, double-breasted blazers and oversize shirting. The palette had an air of Memphis movement; the attitude felt like the photos of Daido Moriyama. Perhaps mere coincidence, but the vertical-striped socks called to mind Daniel Buren’s famous marble columns in the Palais Royal, not far from the brand’s HQ. Surrounding the collections’ stated muses seemed myriad other references that combined and clashed to dynamic effect.It’s taken until now to point out that the cadre of models was entirely Asian, some coming from Japan, China, and Korea for the show. “We took a really directional casting this season,” said Leon, pointing out the diversity within the framework.
This, he said, was their way of truly reflecting the muses as closely as possible. And when the two collections came together at the end, the two expressions did, indeed, coalesce—but more tellingly, the sheer number of looks (83 in total) was an expression of commercial breadth. As the final show on the Paris men’s calendar, the production made for quite the blockbuster finale, with or without the interlude. Had the students been there, it would have rocked their world.
26 June 2017
Humberto Leon and Carol Lim have known since joining Kenzo in 2011 that the runway can also be a stage—whether for entertainment or awareness. For their combined men’s and women’s shows tonight, they brought their backstage out into the open, with hair and makeup, wardrobe, and even the food station fully operational within the center of the event space. The behind-the-scenes activity—a play on transparency, to some degree—was lively, no question; but more important, it was cost effective. In lieu of spending money on a splashy set, the duo chose two organizations—Earth Guardians and Ideas for Us—that Kenzo will support through different, ongoing initiatives. The point, said Lim, was not to position themselves as fashion’s do-gooders: “Let’s start the dialogue and if people learn about ideas through us, that’s great.”Some will surely be learning about arctic surfing for the first time. The oxymoronic extreme sport prompted the designers to consider cold-weather clothes through a balmy filter. The fact that one of the digital prints features a lava pool amid icebergs suggests how far their imagination ran. But really, as Leon and Lim sent out the men’s collection in full, followed by the women’s, the progression of throwback flight suits, aurora borealis dip-dyed and printed knits, polar-explorer signaling, and Hawaiian floral jacquards suggested high-definition self-expression. As they appeared in the show, the graphic mixing and layering seemed decisively bold—destined to be worn by people who’ve determined that neutrals are too passive in today’s noisy world. If this has always been the Kenzo raison d’être, Leon and Lim convincingly pushed beyond activewear into suited-up looks that revised how we would have expected the future to appear a few decades ago, i.e., the plaid double jackets and waist-cinched dresses. Certainly, the “geo-tiger” stripe, a fun wink to geotagging, is a creation of our time.But buried amid all this forecasting were reminders of the past; the designers pointed out how the embroidered trim trailing from a sheer dress (incidentally layered over their Earth Guardians turtleneck) was a technique unearthed from the atelier. Having passed by the Women’s March in Paris the previous day, they were buoyed to see how people gathered on the public stage. “We have work to do over the next four years,” said Lim, as if already brainstorming their next creative translation of the issues that matter most.
25 January 2017
Humberto Leon and Carol Lim have known since joining Kenzo in 2011 that the runway can also be a stage—whether for entertainment or awareness. For their combined men’s and women’s shows tonight, they brought their backstage out into the open, with hair and makeup, wardrobe, and even the food station fully operational within the center of the event space. The behind-the-scenes activity—a play on transparency, to some degree—was lively, no question; but more important, it was cost effective. In lieu of spending money on a splashy set, the duo chose two organizations—Earth Guardians and Ideas for Us—that Kenzo will support through different, ongoing initiatives. The point, said Lim, was not to position themselves as fashion’s do-gooders: “Let’s start the dialogue and if people learn about ideas through us, that’s great.”Some will surely be learning about arctic surfing for the first time. The oxymoronic extreme sport prompted the designers to consider cold-weather clothes through a balmy filter. The fact that one of the digital prints features a lava pool amid icebergs suggests how far their imagination ran. But really, as Leon and Lim sent out the men’s collection in full, followed by the women’s, the progression of throwback flight suits, aurora borealis dip-dyed and printed knits, polar-explorer signaling, and Hawaiian floral jacquards suggested high-definition self-expression. As they appeared in the show, the graphic mixing and layering seemed decisively bold—destined to be worn by people who’ve determined that neutrals are too passive in today’s noisy world. If this has always been the Kenzo raison d’être, Leon and Lim convincingly pushed beyond activewear into suited-up looks that revised how we would have expected the future to appear a few decades ago, i.e., the plaid double jackets and waist-cinched dresses. Certainly, the “geo-tiger” stripe, a fun wink to geotagging, is a creation of our time.But buried amid all this forecasting were reminders of the past; the designers pointed out how the embroidered trim trailing from a sheer dress (incidentally layered over their Earth Guardians turtleneck) was a technique unearthed from the atelier. Having passed by the Women’s March in Paris the previous day, they were buoyed to see how people gathered on the public stage. “We have work to do over the next four years,” said Lim, as if already brainstorming their next creative translation of the issues that matter most.
23 January 2017
You don’t have to fall too far down an Internet rabbit hole to know that fashion people knew how to have a good time back in the ’70s.Kenzo Takadafamously staged a show at Studio 54 back in 1977, and the YouTube videos from the event feature models dancing down the runway with cigarettes dangling from their lips and balloons bouncing at their feet—not to mention a performance by the legendary Grace Jones. Designers Carol Lim and Humberto Leon have had that exuberant vision in their mind’s eye for a while now: Their Resort collection was a nod to their own ’90s club kid days, and this season they cycled back four decades to the epic night in the house’s early history.Lim and Leon called upon the archives of artist Antonio Lopez, who ran in the same circles as Takada back in those days, and had similar creative instincts. His famed Polaroids feature many of the glamorous models on the scene at the time—Jerry Hall, Pat Cleveland—women who were both cast in that very show. Lopez’s images appeared in the collection today, sometimes printed on athletic trapeze-style crop tops for day, or on gigantic black and white paillettes. As the founders of Opening Ceremony, Lim and Leon understand both the retail and design sides of the business; they’ve always had their ear to the ground when it comes to trends on the street, and the elevated workwear and sportswear looks in the lineup were strong right out of the gate. There were slouchy camouflage pants, oversize barn jackets, and raw denim jackets that had a certain cool polish that was amplified by the metallic spiral-heeled shoes, an off-kilter twist on the classic disco sandal. The nylon tracksuits in fire-engine red and black had a flashy ’80s vibe that felt right for now as well; ditto the kinky peg-leg vinyl pants.The show closed with a series of sequin minidresses, though ultimately it was the longer, ankle-grazing looks that hit the right note for after-dark, including a lamé top and skirt that was embellished with sequins at the shoulder and graffitied with a blue and pink pattern. All in all, the collection gave cool, city-dwelling women several compelling reasons to party on to the shop floor come February.
4 October 2016
Like all good nights spent sweat-drenched by strobe light, there was so much going on at thisKenzoshow that recalling all of it afterwards, even as you stumbled euphoric out the door into the glare of morning sunshine, represented a challenge.Carol LimandHumberto Leonwent back to the 1990s again with a club-life homage of a collection that was fun, fun, fun to watch, especially if you were there back then. Many an editor was chair-jacking to “Keep On Jumpin’ ” and “I’ll House You” as they spun in Todd Terry’s nano-set soundrack: Those hedonists at WWD were able to report attendance at a significant number of the 90-or-so ’90s nights listed on the press notes. Lim and Leon had tracked down the artists and promoters who produced the flyers for many of them, and secured the rights for those naive, early-digital-era, ecstasy-generation illustrations for their prints.The models emerged in groups, cliques of club kids heading out in tribally-aligned suites of house-jungle-techno-trance–ready attire. There were three lads in monochrome looks of berets, windbreakers, and dancing pants worn atop colored leather rubber-soled loafers. Then three more in blue and lime looks of tracksuits and sweats or short-sleeve printed shirts and jackets layered over long-sleeved logo ringer tees and rib-knits. Print pants were pulled low to the hip to allow views of print boxer shorts pulled high to the navel and worn under tucked-in horizontal-striped ringer tees to act as equator. Eight-stripe zip-up boots complemented similarly striped knits of the sort Paul Smith did a lot of back in the day. There was a raver-esque Moschino-ness in the soap powder–font ‘Brilliant’ hoodies. An eyelet and scallop hemmed and cuffed double-skirted dress in what looked like crunchily treated silk-cotton-nylon indented white on white with the impression of some flyer-sourced ice cream sundae image looked wicked. Lim and Leon kept dropping clique after clique, men after women, in a back-against-the base-bin onrush of looks that challenged the eye to stay in sync but was a rush to try and hold down.Afterwards, during a chill-out post-show vigil by the models on the scrappily grouted, spray-painted, zig-zag white tile runway, Leon reflected: “It’s interesting, because Carol and I lived through this generation and we wanted this collection to really celebrate nightlife. So I think the way it’s put together is this modern take on this way of dressing.
I think there was a freedom in the ’90s, we tried to capture a little bit of that sense of freedom. And the sense of you going out an night with your friends and looking like a pack.”
26 June 2016
Like all good nights spent sweat-drenched by strobe light, there was so much going on at thisKenzoshow that recalling all of it afterwards, even as you stumbled euphoric out the door into the glare of morning sunshine, represented a challenge.Carol LimandHumberto Leonwent back to the 1990s again with a club-life homage of a collection that was fun, fun, fun to watch, especially if you were there back then. Many an editor was chair-jacking to “Keep On Jumpin’ ” and “I’ll House You” as they spun in Todd Terry’s nano-set soundrack: Those hedonists at WWD were able to report attendance at a significant number of the 90-or-so ’90s nights listed on the press notes. Lim and Leon had tracked down the artists and promoters who produced the flyers for many of them, and secured the rights for those naive, early-digital-era, ecstasy-generation illustrations for their prints.The models emerged in groups, cliques of club kids heading out in tribally-aligned suites of house-jungle-techno-trance–ready attire. There were three lads in monochrome looks of berets, windbreakers, and dancing pants worn atop colored leather rubber-soled loafers. Then three more in blue and lime looks of tracksuits and sweats or short-sleeve printed shirts and jackets layered over long-sleeved logo ringer tees and rib-knits. Print pants were pulled low to the hip to allow views of print boxer shorts pulled high to the navel and worn under tucked-in horizontal-striped ringer tees to act as equator. Eight-stripe zip-up boots complemented similarly striped knits of the sort Paul Smith did a lot of back in the day. There was a raver-esque Moschino-ness in the soap powder–font ‘Brilliant’ hoodies. An eyelet and scallop hemmed and cuffed double-skirted dress in what looked like crunchily treated silk-cotton-nylon indented white on white with the impression of some flyer-sourced ice cream sundae image looked wicked. Lim and Leon kept dropping clique after clique, men after women, in a back-against-the base-bin onrush of looks that challenged the eye to stay in sync but was a rush to try and hold down.Afterwards, during a chill-out post-show vigil by the models on the scrappily grouted, spray-painted, zig-zag white tile runway, Leon reflected: “It’s interesting, because Carol and I lived through this generation and we wanted this collection to really celebrate nightlife. So I think the way it’s put together is this modern take on this way of dressing.
I think there was a freedom in the ’90s, we tried to capture a little bit of that sense of freedom. And the sense of you going out an night with your friends and looking like a pack.”
25 June 2016
As the race for the White House unfolds in spectacular fashion, it’s hard to ignore the din from across the Atlantic in Paris. That’s perhaps whyHumberto LeonandCarol Limchose to open theirKenzoshow with the American national anthem, segueing into excerpts from a speech by Killer Mike, the highly politicized rapper from Atlanta. As Americans in Paris, Lim and Leon have a unique vantage point on the Parisian house—while the French have laid claim to the idea of chic for centuries, it’s Americans who invented cool, and that’s something that Lim and Leon have understood since they foundedOpening Ceremony, arguably one of the coolest stores in the world.Though the political agenda of the soundtrack seemed jarring in the context of the show, there was a clearer message in the clothes. The quirky maximalism that’s been sweeping the runways of late hasn’t been lost on Lim and Leon, and there was a compelling kookiness in place of the sporty aesthetic the designers have favored in the past for Kenzo. Sailor Moon, the beloved anime character, was referenced in the show notes, and her charming wardrobe came through along with nods to the uniform of Japanese school girls, namely crisp white blouses with puffed sleeves and neat A-line miniskirts. It wasn’t all sweetness and light, though: The traditional nautical jacket was toughened up in leather, and the sailor-style overalls owed more to American workwear than manga cartoons.Dangling red, white, and blue statement earrings, on the other hand, looked like the streamers used to celebrate on Election Day. Fifties housewife staples, such as cigarette pants and pumps, had rock ’n’ roll attitude, rendered in PVC and lurid shades of velvet, of which violet was one of the most eye-catching. Similarly, romantic high-collared minidresses were patchworked with a perverse but compelling combo of neon tiger stripes, floral prints, and grid-check motifs. While that eclectic mix wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before, the collection hit on some of fashion’s most important hot buttons. With their wedge-like kitten heels and animal-print finishes, the knee-high boots will certainly win the vote of women looking for a moderate yet stylish alternative to the thigh-high stiletto boot.
8 March 2016
Like a fresh breeze in a dusty room with a window just thrown open,Kenzo’s first-thing Saturday morning show was a comprehensive cobweb-clearer thanks to 100 or so choristers who performed a version of Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation,” arranged by Thomas Roussel.We were quite far from the center of the city, by the Peripherique; outside the venue, a group of women in hijabs and reflective jackets was distributing food from the back of a cart to the homeless. Just a few blocks up was the kosher supermarket where the post–Charlie Hebdosiege unfolded. Jackson’s stirring utopian lyric of tolerance isn’t always easy to see reflected in the world around us—but it can be—and to hear it sung so purely was a joyful thing.The clothes! Carol Lim and Humberto Leon said their starting point was a Blur gig they attended in Tokyo back in 1995. (“Don’t date us!” protested Leon.) There was certainly an of-that-time shadow in the kicky pant shape, the slouchy sweats featuring Kenzo Takada’s signature italic, and the Buffalo-touched, bulked-up sneakers, some of them patterned. (P.S. Around 1992, this reviewerlivedin a Camden-bought cotton hoodie that went to mid-thigh and featured a similar space-out of arcing grids, which dates me.) A Fido Dido looseness and Spiral Tribe–meets–Daisy Agecolor was accented by dance floorrouesuiting in lacquer-coated croc-pattern jacquard—later mirrored in the berry-mix panels on velvet shirts. A look-at-it-to-see, kissing-couple pattern wool jacquard made for highly embraceable coats and bombers that glinted with peace sign metal hardware. This was a nostalgic eye-popper of a collection with plenty of potential for contemporary integration. “Love in the ’90s is paranoid,” Damon Albarn sings onLive at the Budokan—plus ça change.
23 January 2016
Count onKenzoto deliver a collection that imparts female strength using the symbol of a stylized flower. While it’s tempting to reduce the statement to a sporty exercise in Asian fusion, the component parts revealed how Carol Lim and Humberto Leon were designing outside the box—red lacquer or otherwise. Most notably, everyday pieces had been engineered in terms of fabrication (slickened Lurex piqué) and shape, as when hems on pants and shirtsleeves were slightly displaced to achieve an altered silhouette—just like how the crease in a folded piece of paper acts as an axis of dimension. And these loosely applied origami principles also extended to two new bags (Rizo, a leather satchel, and Champ, a nylon jacquard). Shearling coats (a bomber and a trapeze) were shaved with a patterned relief, which threw to the pointillist effect on a geometric print, itself a faint echo of Fernand Léger. Elsewhere, thick twisted black cord served as an ornamental theme, appearing on stretch floral minidresses and as a “chest plate” accessory for leather jogging pants with warm-up jackets.The Japanese influence—further underscored by the Kenzo logo in katakana and the “Tanami” flower insignia (picture an anime hibiscus)—played into the brand’s impulse to offer a thematic hook. While a graphic entry point never hurts, sometimes the must-haves aren’t so noticeable. The ankle boots stood out for their rectangular kitten heels, and those seemingly basic platform ballerina flats have been freshly reissued from the Kenzo archive.
11 January 2016
DesignersCarol LimandHumberto Leonlove a far-flung, unexpected destination for their Kenzo shows. Those who made it out to the Nineteenth Arrondissement this morning, though, were transported to a different milieu in more ways than one: Gigantic white arches were stacked on the runway, and painted with the shades of pink and peach that recalled the sun-washed architecture of Mediterranean towns, such as Portofino in Italy.Kenzo is a brand that's global and nomadic at its core, so having endless summer vacation vibes built into the set was a nice touch. And with their new collection, the New York duo addressed how a well-traveled, modern woman can put some of that feeling into her everyday wardrobe. The wordswimtimateswill sound unfamiliar to some, but essentially it takes the traditional idea of a bathing suit into your lingerie drawer, an approach to summer dressing that cool young things on the festival circuit will understand. There were compelling renditions on the runway that were worth flaunting: knit, geometric pieces that peeked from under spaghetti utilitarian minidresses and updates on the ’90s bodysuits that were paired with printed miniskirts.The fanny pack, that other ’90s favorite, got a makeover too, and the best example was fashioned military style, with three small pouches on a waist-cinching belt. Lim and Leon have a knack for making practical and Instagrammable accessories like this, though the ornate chandelier earrings and bold necklaces were a little misplaced within the sporty, graphic context of the collection. The sensible, ankle-strap gladiator sandals that came with spiky reflexology footbeds put the skin-baring, printed looks on a fresh footing.
4 October 2015
This was a smooth, serene, mildly spaced-out trip from Kenzo—although it missed some of the bumps and judders that generate excitement. As per last season, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon flirted with the extraterrestrial—Etienne Russo's fantastic set of sand, basalt, and sparkle-sliced boulders that rotated at the finale could have been the Vasquez Rocks or Cestus III (that's a Trekkie reference, but a deep one). The roundness of the sunglasses' frames was meant to hint at an interplanetary significance. The motif that really tugged in this collection, though, was one subject to gravity: parachuting. There was that "Pull" command on shirts, sweats, and the back of a yolky yellow mac. And elsewhere you saw the puckering of cross seams across garments in silkily finished nylon, capri-length jumpsuits, and D-rings trailing ripcords and bags, which themselves looked like messily rolled-up canopies. Although unfortunately not demonstrated in the show, afterward Leon said that the trailing straps served a purpose, both aesthetic and functional: They could be pulled to tighten, raise, lower—or, presumably sometimes perhaps, just to ruche—the clothes they were attached to.With the odd exception of hot pink jersey or soft wide stripes on segment dyed denim, this was an on-the-whole neutral, wanly toned collection of lightweight synthetic—or synthetic to the eye—fabrics. Sometimes texture provided compensation, in enthusiastically crinkled suits and, most of all, in a marvelously ridged raised knit that was meant to look like a cactus but defied appearances: "It's really soft," said Lim, "you can hug someone wearing it." It was cheering to learn that Lim is an adrenalin sports junkie who has thrown herself out of a fair few planes in search of a rush. This collection rather lacked both the wit and the punch of the last—it could have done with some Gorn—but viewed in isolation, it was fine enough.
27 June 2015
The first observation that will likely cross your mind when you survey Kenzo's Resort collection is the no-color color. You'll get the impression the entire grouping was exposed to a bleached Instagram filter so that the lilac appears more powdery and the army green akin to parched earth.Turns out, Humberto Leon and Carol Lim drew from the desert, allowing its climatic characteristics to inform aesthetic and functionality alike. The cartoony cacti print satisfied the brand's quirky prerequisite, but an embroidered cactus camo, a lunar-mapped jacquard, and a pointillist sand print had equal graphic impact precisely because they had been abstracted. The big picture boiled down to arid everyday dressing: extra-floaty skirts and dresses, from pleated mesh to parka-style; pants just generous enough for ventilation; a crisp white poplin dress with studded removable panels so that it could be worn mini, midi, or maxi; and nylon layers for when the wind kicks up. Meanwhile, all the fabrics glided atop the skin—except, of course, for the camel sweatpants with their shamelessly logo-ed right leg. But the focus on polish—the recurring use of black trim, shiny D-rings, and talisman-like pendants—kept the looks from drifting too thematic. Oh, but there was a water-bottle-inspired minaudière, which would have been ingenious had it actually contained a vessel for fluids. Alas, it didn't. But it did serve to reinforce how the collection, most of all, felt fresh.
17 June 2015
Carol Lim and Humberto Leon's Kenzo shows, like their Opening Ceremony productions in New York, tend to be designed with an eye toward Instagram opportunities. This season was no exception. What looked like a large striped backdrop at the tail end of a huge warehouse space out on the Périphérique turned out to be six separate columns on wheels with a holographic treatment on three sides, each one operated by Wi-Fi. As the first model emerged from behind it, the wall followed her, broke apart, and proceeded with its choreographed maneuvers through the end of the show.It was pretty mesmerizing, and if you weren't careful, you almost missed the actual clothes. That would've been a mistake, because this time around their game-changing marketing skills were matched by the collection that came down the runway. After opting out of prints (a Kenzo signature) last season, they brought them back double-force for Fall. Out on the street, there'd be no overlooking the Kenzo girl, not with her layers of floral jacquards and her blanket-stripe shawls wound around her shoulders. Sometimes the tendency to embellish got the better of the designers. There were too many plastic paillettes, and an excess of fringing on some pieces. But most of the time, the more-is-more vibe was working for them. And the silhouette story was just as important as the prints. When the weather turns cold again, the Kenzo girl will be armed against it with generously proportioned poncho anoraks and handkerchief-hem skirts that echoed the anoraks' A-lines. If she likes her outerwear on the tougher side, there will also be a bounty of shearling-lined leather motorcycle jackets and vests to choose from, as well as a good many balaclavas. We can see those jackets multiplying on the streets next winter.
8 March 2015
Are we alone? Who knows—the odds of there being extraterrestrial life are deemed unquantifiable. On planet Kenzo, though, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon are ready for first contact, whoever and whatever emerges down the landing ramp in a cloud of dry ice.Presented in Jean Nouvel's just-opened Philharmonie de Paris (which could be from another solar system itself), this collection was young, loud, and digestibly left field—sotrèsKenzo. Staple bomber jackets were rethought via ribbed thumbholes and complementary paneling at the hem, or more directly with spray-colored fur at the collar. Thick stitching wound around mixed-material panels or slashed straight through leather-strip chunky boots. Nylon suits in olive and wine flashed moiré under the inflatable lights. Single-breasted green and red overcoats had black popper pockets on each arm. The silver cloak and coat toward the end were astronaut-street, and the designers sent more direct messages to the cosmos with a Kenzo-font "UFO" sweatshirt, symbol socks, and nylon parkas that danced with little Inca-esque spaceships and aliens. A dark hooded jacket and pant ensemble was crazy-sprayed with more dripping hieroglyphs and spaceships, like the jottings of some locked-up alien abductee or a graffiti artist who's watched too muchStargate.Lim said the collection started with "the idea of individuals that build into a community, and openness to believing in what else might be out there." So you don't have to believe in E.T. to tap into the tribal function of this collection. Via two tunes from Saint Etienne'sFoxbase Alphaon the soundtrack, plus the chunkiness of both silhouettes and boots, it was reminiscent of 1990s Camden Town—loads of loudly dressed kids, communicating with clothes.But that doesn't answer the question: Are we alone? This collection featured quite a few Undeniably Fine Overcoats. And if you were an alien who fell to Earth, where wouldyougo and hang to pass unnoticed? The menswear shows, obviously. The truth may be out there already—in a Tommy Ton gallery.
24 January 2015
Carol Lim and Humberto Leon have built a community of creatives around them. In their work for Kenzo and Opening Ceremony, they've tapped the likes of Spike Jonze, Jonah Hill, Catherine Keener, and Chloë Sevigny for collaborations and special one-off projects—who could forget the one-act play OC staged last September?So it wasn't a surprise to hear the creative directors talking about designer Kenzo Takada's own tribe at the Kenzo Pre-Fall presentation this morning: "They had their own language, and there was this idea of community and protection, but everyone in his clan did their own things." Riffing on that idea, they turned hieroglyphs into graphic black-and-white prints for pajama sets and dresses, some with a waxy sheen. And the wordlove,as good a rallying cry as any, was stamped on the single button of a silk duchesse pantsuit and used as a repeating graphic on knits. Coming at the notion from a different angle, they also explored pared-down uniform dressing, cutting loose-fitting jumpsuits and an oversize bomber jacket in army green and trimming military parkas with fox-fur collars.Add a soupçon of rave styling via fur clogs, bright chunky boots, and topknots, and it made for Lim and Leon's liveliest mix in a while.
9 January 2015
"Kenzo would like to remind you there is no planet B. Please protect what is precious," an avatar announced in multiple languages before the start of this morning's show at a skate park near Paris' Périphérique. "Climate departure" talk can turn the sunniest personalities into pessimists, but that wasn't the plan today. In the past, Humberto Leon and Carol Lim have worn their politics on their sleeves. Ominous message from the Kenzo avatar aside, the vibes here were optimistic and upbeat.The new collection was a mash-up of the skater culture of Leon's and Lim's California childhoods and the atelier workmanship of their adopted city, with a soupçon of Kenzo Takada's native Japan. Skate-kid palazzo pants with enormous leg openings shared the catwalk with calf-length trumpet dresses in graphic, Eiffel Tower-inspired lace. Broderie anglaise in the blocky letters of the Kenzo logo mingled with pale blue denim cut into easy, relaxed pieces. It was an energetic mix—the streetwise sensibility of the skater silhouettes softened by the presence of elegant 1920s shapes. A few of the looks were too slouchy; it was hard to find the model inside a printed pink oversize jacket and split-seam palazzo pants. But there was a nice athleticism to a tank and floor-length skirt laser-cut in tiny dots. And a sack coat with rubberized detailing on the lapels worn with swaggering blue jeans was a smart blending of Leon and Lim's old and new habitats. If it should come to planet B climate-wise, their shower sandals looked seaworthy.
28 September 2014
Kenzo is finding its sweet spot. For Spring, still-new designers Humberto Leon and Carol Lim—Americans in Paris who started the internationally adored shop Opening Ceremony—tapped into the great and gushy fondness they harbor for the two countries they now call home. "It's an unapologetic embrace of America and France," said Leon, whose partner was absent today, unable to board a plane due to her own happy circumstances. "It's also about the historic relationship between the two," he added, "as well as that sense of wonder when a tourist goes to a place like New York or Paris for the first time."It would have beentrès, très bonif the weather had cooperated, given that the show was held outdoors in a nook overlooking the Seine. Alas, the forecast insisted on a sullen drizzle, in high contrast to the sunny disposition that emanated from the clothes. Models walked briskly, so as to beat a sudden downpour, in a charm offensive whose highlights included macaroon-colored outerwear, scooter-ready parkas, tanks and tees in dueling bright stripes, body-cocooning canvas coats awash in modified nautical stripes, and matching polka-dot shirts and pants. Bags were square-in-circle zippered clutches overtly referencing the famed French architect Le Corbusier—probablytooadorable, and mod-like, for many men to actually tote around come spring. The clothes had more than enough prep appeal to make up for it.We've seen some excellent intarsia pieces this season, but few as excellent as those at Kenzo. The optical-knit technique—whereby various yarns are used to create a seamless patchwork of colors and recognizable shapes—was employed to re-create familiar images on sweaters of the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, andLes Misérables'poster girl, Cosette. The show invitation was an enormous key ring clanging with little plastic Eiffel Towers, an unabashedly garish reminder of kitschy souvenir shops. It was also a reminder that the Kenzo designers are still able to view Paris with the touristy sense of wonder Leon spoke about, and that perspective is leading to great results.
27 June 2014
Kenzo Takada was a foreigner in France. So are Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, Kenzo's current standard-bearers. Their new collection for Resort, Leon explained, is about "embracing our outsider status in Paris." Tourist attractions like the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty (a French gift to America, remember) appeared on the souvenir brass buttons on peacoats, and the show was staged at Four World Trade Center, a site never used for a fashion show before. "The World Trade Center felt like a great trinity to those iconic places," Leon said.It could've gone kitsch, but it didn't. The clothes had a nice, graphic sensibility. Chalk that up to Leon and Lim's exaggerated take on typical French marinière stripes and their bold use of polka dots, one of Resort's recurring motifs. (Puffed-up cotton separates somewhat clouded their streamlined message.) The Kenzo designers are the ones who kick-started fashion's current mania with logo sweatshirts. This show was blessedly free of them, which elevated the proceedings further. But that didn't mean the label's signature look was completely grown-up. Pinafore dresses and printed rompers and minis ensured that the mood remained young and energetic. Still, the most striking look was the most sophisticated: A royal blue ankle-grazing silk shirtdress with a split side seam exposed a whole lotta leg over flat gladiator sandals.
9 June 2014
This was the third in what Kenzo's Carol Lim and Humberto Leon consider their David Lynch trilogy, following Pre-Fall and men's collections inspired by the filmmaker's oeuvre. Both of those shows had aTwin Peaksflavor. Having convinced Lynch himself to sign on as a collaborator this season, the connection was more explicit here, at least as far as presentation was concerned. The director mixed the soundtrack for today's show and was responsible for the large sculpture of a head in front of the camera pit. Its mouth was open in an agonized howl, but if the collection's mood was slightly darker than what we've come to expect from Kenzo, it wasn't as sinister as all that.Backstage the designers said that Lynch's aesthetic had seeped into their clothes in specific ways. "There are tools in every one of his movies," Leon noted. Hence the printed and embroidered "tool creatures" that multiplied all over coats, pantsuits, and bustier dresses, as well as the fine-gauge knits that were used as layering pieces for many of the looks. Those turtlenecks will be appealing even to girls who don't dress in the irrepressible, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink way that the Kenzo show is styled. When things took a turn for the surreal, as in the shirt collars that morphed into peplums, the show was less convincing. Leon and Lim's Kenzo has become a success because of pieces that move convincingly from runway to reality. The items that seemed destined to do that here included ribbed knit separates embroidered with thin strips of bronze and silver metal, and a long quilted parka in a graphic acid-yellow and black pattern that, come to think of it, would probably come in handy in Twin Peaks, Washington.
1 March 2014
Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, American ambassadors to France, are translating their native land for the French one region at a time. Having offered their version of California casual last season, the Kenzo creative directors moved to the Pacific Northwest for Fall. "When we used to live in Berkeley, we used to always go north, and we spent a lot of time in those different states," Leon said. "There's a specific way of dressing in them, a really cinematic way. When you think of Americana, that area is always played with."They erected their own monument to the region—literally, given that the show set consisted of the raw frames of houses, and the decorative motif on clothes and shoes was metal appliqués of "tool monsters." They didn't have the immediate appeal of the Kenzo tigers or evil eyes that have been the totems of previous seasons, but they did lend a menace that helped situate this cinematic production in the spectrum of PNW creepiness somewhere between Gus Van Sant and David Lynch.The clothes that costumed their cinematic spectacle were darker and choppier than usual: four-button jackets squared at the waist, cropped knitwear, and high straight pants in forest-floor colors of mud and leaf. The designers said they'd obsessed over the functionality of every piece, from the warmth of a down puffer to the grip of a massive-soled boot. Was it this new emphasis that gave the proceedings a more self-consciously serious air than in some seasons past? You can't spell "function" without "fun," but this downplayed the Kenzo pop that's been a signature of its revival under Leon and Lim. Without it, the results weren't as distinctively their own as usual; here and there a whiff of Prada crept in.Still, the duo has a powerful talent for reframing even the narratives we thought we knew. (Through their collaboration at Opening Ceremony, they helped to spearhead the rebranding of Pendleton, the pride of the Pacific Northwest, as a hipster favorite.) Could they sell Paris on Portland? The Oregon Tourist Board would kill for their reach.
17 January 2014
Overfishing off the coast of their native California was Humberto Leon and Carol Lim's frame of reference for Spring. For their Pre-Fall collection for Kenzo, they shifted their attentions a few degrees of latitude north. The American Northwest was their starting point, they explained after a presentation held at one of the offbeat locations they have a knack for unearthing, the General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen in Midtown. One thing you can definitely say about Leon and Lim: They're on their own trip.This season, their taste for the off-kilter produced a print of motel corridors with doors to nowhere, and another of orderly crisscrossing fluorescent lights that occasionally wobbled off their axis. Good-looking brushed plaid skirts wrapped asymmetrically around the waist with hems that were different lengths on either side, quite literally askew. As for the sweaters that read "Fire"? Our first thought wasTwin Peaks. (The soundtrack was Roy Orbison's "In Dreams," which was used to memorable effect in another David Lynch opus,Blue Velvet.) "We wanted a word that had a duality," Lim said. "Fire is a necessity, but there's also the fear of fire and its destructive power."Their Northwest reference point cued some strong outerwear, the best of which was a black checked lumberjack's jacket finished off with a sapphire blue fur collar. Also worth a callout: wood-grain pumps suggestive of car interiors—with that lumberjack's jacket, they looked especially twisted. A kick all around.
9 January 2014
Like the tiger sweatshirts before them, Kenzo's eye prints from Fall are everywhere you look. Now that Carol Lim and Humberto Leon have seized the style world's attention, they're serving up some fashion activism for Spring. Good for them. Today, they took up the cause of overfishing. As the pair are natives of California, the ocean's troubles hit close to home. Backstage, they rattled off a list of fish—tuna, cod, trout (and there are many more)—that are nearing extinction levels. To do their small part, they've designed a slogan tee, a portion of the proceeds of which will go to the Blue Marine Foundation. "No fish, no nothing," it reads.Since signing on at Kenzo, Lim and Leon have been fairly reverent of the Kenzo Takada codes, even as they've tweaked them for their social-media-mad young fans. This season was the first time that they've used their personal history as a guide, and it proved a good move. Born mixologists, they wove together sea motifs, surf culture, and references to L.A.'s underground music scene in the new collection. For a venue, they chose Luc Besson's film studio La Cité du Cinéma; as Left Coasters, "the Hollywood of Paris" is a natural fit. And where else but on a movie set could they have created the waterfall that flowed the entire duration of the show, or the drums that sprayed water to the beat of the music?The collection's melting-fish print stands a very good chance of becoming the Kenzo Eye of Spring '14. Those pieces will get snapped up by the label's acolytes. As usual with Lim and Leon, this show was chock-full of prints, and they weren't without cheek. The scribbled blue waves eventually turned red. If we don't stop overfishing, the color shift seemed to suggest, things won't end well. Activism aside, where Lim and Leon made advances was with the fabrics—not the neoprene, which is a touch predictable by now, but with a glossy tech material that looked like it had been submerged in water and came out glistening. The tailoring was ingenious in its own way, too, with back vents cut into jackets and dresses, as the designers said, to let the breeze in. All around, an enlivening experience.
28 September 2013
Humberto Leon and Carol Lim spent their first few seasons settling into Kenzo by mining the inspirations of the house's founder and namesake, the jungle motifs that inspired his seventies Jungle Jap collections, and in the process, filling city streets with more tiger-face logo sweatshirts than would have seemed possible. That they showed their new collection at a circus-training academy on the outskirts of Paris suggested more beasts might be in the mix. But actually, Leon said before their show, "Carol and I really wanted to go back to us, and everything we grew up with." They're from SoCal's dueling valleys—the San Fernando (her) and the San Gabriel (him)—and wanted, Lim added, "California ease." The Kenzo logo sweatshirt now is etched with a print of a crashing wave. To put it bluntly, in the terms of their countrymen: Everybody goin' surfing—and if this clarification were even necessary—surfing U.S.A.!"We're really feeling our Americanness," Leon said. It's a quality that's at once specific and ubiquitous, American culture being a global export. It was less that the collection had a specific national character as that it felt more personal and more comfortable for the designers, relative to the stiffness of some of their more theoretical capital-F fashion outings. It wasn't tricky. Pants were wider, cut off or dragging slightly, in Cali surf 'n' skate style, T-shirts in neoprene were worn ragged and unhemmed, like cut-off wetsuits. Yet it had a sporty, streetwise flair. The graphics, always a Kenzo standout, were great here: scratchy hand-drawn waves (shades of Raymond Pettibon) and scribbled lingo ("freakout!") that suited the mood.It was young, messy, and uncomplicated—if not always the expectation of an LVMH maison, more and more a key component of Kenzo's success. The company's chief talent scout, Pierre-Yves Roussel, was beaming in attendance, and he'd brought along his teenage son, wearing a Kenzo sweatshirt he likely didn't need to be talked into. There've been plenty of other examples on the streets and in the stands this fashion week. That figures. "Almost every Parisian we've met," Leon said, "wants to move to L.A."
28 June 2013
Carol Lim and Humberto Leon are going back to Cali. That's where they're from, but only after learning how much Parisians dream about the Golden State did they realize they were ready to reference their suburban upbringings for Kenzo's menswear and Resort collections. Capturing an unaffected style without dipping into nostalgia was Lim and Leon's smartest move, but there were plenty of others. For starters, they shifted away from digital prints, instead toying with imperfect washed-out marker stripes and hand-drawn graphic palm fronds (sometimes painted directly onto fabric or leather). The other message was tailoring 2.0. Double-pointed hemlines—the detail inherent to men's vests—appeared on miniskirts and trim jacquard jackets. They gave tweed knit the sculpted shape of neoprene and bonded a cotton/linen blend to create a clean-edged coat in Barbie pink.From an Astroturf-covered terrace at the designers' Paris office building, Leon explained how they mimicked the grooves of an egg crate (see: trash bags lining their suburban streets) by cutting and pulling fabric from the inside. The wet effect on a cropped cotton shirt was the result of twisting and glazing the thread before it was woven. At this point, you start to understand just how committed Leon and Lim are to furthering the Kenzo innovation credo but within a more personal, laid-back context.Fabric research and development begins for Lim and Leon eight to ten months before designing, which means they have already determined Resort 2015. This is what they love doing the most, said Lim. In the immediate future, they are throwing a Fourth of July barbecue party in Paris—because you can't take the California out of these two, and nor should you.
25 June 2013
No detail is too big or too small for Kenzo creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon. Today's amazing venue, the historic Paris department store La Samaritaine, was positively enormous. Recently purchased by LVMH, La Samaritaine is about to undergo a two-year renovation and will become a luxury mall and hotel. "This is the first and last show here ever," a PR rep confirmed. It definitely had the feeling of a fashion happening, but the space was a bit too unwieldy in the end; the models had so much ground to cover, they didn't get close enough to the crowd. As for the little things, there was Starbucks coffee in plastic to-go mugs and Kenzo down wraps on every seat. You'll be seeing plenty of those on the street-style blogs in the coming days.Ten years running Opening Ceremony has attuned Leon and Lim to what fashion-mad young people want. Recently, that's been color, print, and, from Kenzo at least, logos. Their peppy new collection delivered on the first two of the three. "It all started with these grosgrain ribbons from the seventies, which are probably Kenzo's most collectible dresses," Leon said. That special find got them thinking about Indian temples and, he explained, "the way they're built in so many layers." Metallic, multicolor ribbon prints and crocodile jacquards in glossy red or royal blue evoked the maximalist spirit for which India is known. But the clothes themselves—cross-draped shift dresses, skirt suits with round volumes, men's overcoats, boxy tops tucked into skinny pants—owed less to the subcontinent than to the city streets where the designers and their well-connected friends live. Their pals MIA and Delfina Delettrez Fendi, respectively, scored the soundtrack and made the show's jewelry.The hits here will be a sweatshirt emblazoned with a third eye, and other pieces, like a bomber and wrap mini or a tailored coat that reproduced the motif on a smaller scale. "It's all about protection and warding off evil spirits," they said of the eyes. If anything, it seems these two live under a lucky star, but it's nice they're looking out for the rest of us.
2 March 2013
Having thoroughly explored the Jungle (Jap) floor in previous collections, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon turned their gaze to the sky. Their Fall men's collection, fresh off the runway at Florence's Pitti Uomo, brought blue sky and clouds into their collection; their women's pre-fall outing kept it there.This time around, the designers toyed with volume to mixed effect. Their double-faced neoprene cocoon coats and A-line skirts telegraphed capital-F Fashion but had an unfortunate tendency to swallow their wearers. The confections of tiered ruffles, riffing on the ruffle motif of Kenzo Takada's seventies collections, had a similar effect. But their masterstroke for this collection was to introduce a category that should obliterate any other: denim. Kenzo's kicky, affordable new look was tailor-made for jeans. Now they've arrived, cut tight and printed with abstract florals, night-sky scenes, and a busy animal print called Tessellated Tiger. If it prowls like a hit, and it roars like a hit…
17 January 2013
Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, part-time Parisians, part-time New Yorkers, spend a fair bit of time on planes. "Carol and I fly so much, and we always look out the window," Leon explained after their Fall '13 show, held on the ghostly, smoke-filled second story of Florence's Mercato Centrale di San Lorenzo, a food hall and market where they appeared as Pitti Uomo's invited guests. "I think there's a moment of that we wanted to capture."They spun a myth about sky-bound gods and goddesses and the mortal pilots whose line of duty sent them into the ether, and called the offering The Jungle of the Sky. Jungle has loomed large over Kenzo as Leon and Lim have rebranded it, taking Kenzo Takada's original seventies concept of Jungle Jap and putting animal prints, tiger heads, and a safari-ized version of street wear front and center. Here, they veered. "We wanted to identify with the romantic side of Kenzo, and show a different side of Kenzo Takada that really for us feels like another part of the story that we should be telling," said Leon. Cumulus-cloud prints—abstracted, in some instances, into quasi-camo—took the place of leopard spot and tiger stripe; the warm, tropical colors of seasons past (all on view at the pop-up shop the savvy retailers set up on the fairgrounds, with wares exclusive to Pitti) had been replaced by icy sky blue, deep red, and black.The new silhouette was superheroic: larger on top, with round-shouldered sweaters and spongy, A-line coats, tapered and fitted pants below. The new fabrics, 80 percent of which were developed for the collection, emphasized technical nylon, giving pieces a future-world sheen. "When we were thinking about these warriors and goddesses, they were all kind of powerful feeling, and the shapes gave us that," Leon said. Power and protection were the messages, too, of the bulletproof-looking backpacks designed in collaboration with the hard-shell manufacturer Boblbee. Even the jewelry and fixings designed by pal Delfina Delettrez—button coverings, metal pocket squares meant to be tucked away—signaled defense.Are these fighter pilots caught in a bad romance? Hard to say. The step—or ascent—in a new direction is, itself, deserving of praise, and perhaps more to the point, the show abounded with items easy to buy and sure to sell. But the will to power, though applauded by some, cost some of the sense of fun that has distinguished Lim and Leon's tenure at Kenzo.
Despite the pair's rhapsodizing about the Florentine food market, and the community-building power of eating together, the collection, as much as the venue, was dogged by a persistent chill. And wouldn't you know it, there were Kenzo-logo blankets and hot water bottles keeping place at every seat.
9 January 2013
Humberto Leon and Carol Lim haven't exactly had a hard time attracting fans to their Kenzo revival—their logo sweatshirts are positively legion among the cool kids this season. But this morning's energetic show clicked in a way that their two previous outings never quite did. We promise you, come next Spring those cult sweatshirts will have nothing on their jean jackets, which featured the designers' new theme writ large on their backs: Kenzo Jungle Japan.Jungle Jap, of course, was the store that put Kenzo Takada on the Paris map back in the seventies. (Bonus points to anyone who knows that the original shop was located in the 2nd arrondissement's Passage Choiseul.) After the show today, Leon said, "We wanted to start from the beginning, to breathe new life into the idea of the jungle." For inspiration, the duo visited the real thing in Thailand; the rocks that people received with their invites are souvenirs from the trip.In keeping with their starting point, utility gear and exotic prints were the two big stories. On the one hand, the designers cut off-the-shoulder dresses in sturdy cotton poplin, morphed safari jackets into jumpsuits, and accessorized their knee-high boots with waterproof waders. On the other, an oversize leopard print came supersized in neon brights (on a strappy orange sundress it almost looked like flowers), and a botanical print practically pulsed with diagonal tiger stripes. Prints may have dropped off the Paris radar this season, but not at Kenzo. For one, they're essential to the brand DNA, and for another, the contemporary market the label is cheerfully courting is usually a season or two behind high-end designers. Among the refreshing things about Leon and Lim's approach is its lack of pretensions.All of this and more of their monster-hit sweatshirts, this time embroidered with prowling cats, played out against giant backdrops upon which the team projected a psychedelic video by Kenzo Digital. Yes, Kenzo is Mr. Digital's real first name. That synergy was symbolic of the good things that are happening at Kenzo right now.
29 September 2012
Welcome to the jungle. A blast of monkey screech was the first sound you heard on the Kenzo soundtrack; the first sight, a group of parkour acrobats who flipped and rolled from the Maison du Judo's high balcony here, there, and everywhere through the candy-colored space. "The termjungleis hand in hand with the termKenzo," Humberto Leon explained. The original Kenzo Jungle Jap store, opened in Paris in 1970, is a brand touchstone. Going back into the wild—Leon and his partner, Carol Lim, recently made a trek into the jungles of Thailand and Indonesia—was their way of bringing the brand back to itself.The result felt more fully realized as an entity unto itself—and as a complement to the women's collection—than the debut show last season. It's no surprise that Leon and Lim, finely calibrated as they are to the new and the next, touched on the fabrics of the season (cotton canvas, silk) as well as its new shapes (boxy bermuda shorts, wider trousers). Leon merely shrugged that you'd need the breathability they offered hacking your way through the jungle. But the jungle is inspiration, not destination. You wouldn't wear the abstracted animal prints the duo debuted (tiger stripe, leopard) to attract a big cat. Big game on the city streets, maybe. Between those pants, those prints, the trendy tailoring, and the signature sweatshirts (embroidered tiger-face front, har-har tiger-tail back), there was enough spirited sportswear to do plenty of attracting, which, in turn, should bring Kenzo back into the conversation, and the Jungle Jap spirit to a new generation. You have to imagine that's just what Kenzo's owners at LVMH were hoping for.
29 June 2012
Humberto Leon and Carol Lim have made the jungle—and Kenzo's Jungle Jap—the launch pad for their reboot of the brand. "We decided to take it back to the beginnings of Kenzo," Leon explained at his Paris studio. He and Lim had recently come back from a trip through the real-life jungles for inspiration. The ones they visited were East Asian, and what they saw there both literally and figuratively infused their Resort offering. The leopard print they used is derived from the markings of a specific beast: the clouded leopard, native only to East Asia. Their knit stitch was inspired by basket weaving seen in situ.Shapes, too, were inspired by their travels. A cotton/raffia parka, which zips off into an abbreviated version, looked ready for the wild. So did cotton stopper-pull shorts. Stoppers appeared on many different pieces, from dresses to wide-legged pants, offering plays with volume from the dramatic to the cinched. Those inflated shapes made for a more overtly fashion-conscious range than the duo has offered to date. With risk comes reward, though some pieces may find them out on a limb. Speaking of, their first structured bag, the No. 18 (named for their studio address on Rue Vivienne), debuts here, complete with an iPad case inside. But where to charge such a contraption in the jungle?
26 June 2012
It's official. In a mere two seasons, Humberto Leon and Carol Lim have turned Kenzo into one of the hottest shows on the Paris calendar. Diddy was there today. So was Francesco Vezzoli, Jean-Paul Goude, and just about every international cool kid and editor in chief—sardined onto three acid-hued levels in the space-age atrium of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie. "We wanted a venue that had never been used before," said Lim after the show. "We saw this space and we were like, let's definitely push it to the limit."Push it they did. With models taking escalators to walk a full round on three levels, the staging could have tried a weary showgoer's patience. But these 50—yes, 50—looks kept the energy pumping. The theme, loosely, was interiors, thus the prints of marble tile floors and bunches of grapes. (Add resin-covered walnut jewelry, a collaboration with Delfina Delettrez Fendi, for a healthy sartorial snack.) The cool, slouchy, open-knit sleeves on tweed coats were meant to echo an afghan laid over a couch. One skirt and blouse looked embroidered with curtain tassels.Leon also stressed tailoring, which showed up in fresh little skirtsuits of blouson jackets with full, flippy skirts, as well as in a narrow, high-waist, ankle-length skirt that was slit up the back. Overall there was a more polished, less street-wear vibe than Spring, and if it didn't have quite the same focus as their last outing, that was in keeping with Leon's notion of "a girl dressing up in her closet, playing with different types of clothing." More looks means more to sell for these merchandisers extraordinaire. It wouldn't be a surprise to see their logo tiger sweater, a revived house code, everywhere in a few months.In general, the days of the fun fashion happening would seem to be bygone. But between the Magnolia cupcakes left on each seat—made by bakers flown in expressly for the show—and the Kenzo model army taking its final formation to major applause, this felt like a new incarnation of that spirit.
3 March 2012
Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, famously pally with the highest stratosphere of cool kids, could have picked any member of their circle, from Spike Jonze to Chloë Sevigny, to inspire their new Kenzo collection. Instead, they chose Steve Jobs. The patron saint of the mock turtleneck isn't mood-board material for most designers. But the Opening Ceremony pair's nose for the next has proven all but infallible in the past. For their Paris men's debut, it didn't disappoint."I was really inspired by Jobs," Leon explained. "Carol and I are children of the nineties, and we really feel that moment when the Internet became big is a big starting point for us, when young people started immediately making money, and companies around the world were starting to address the needs of this new kind of business. A lot of people who weren't part of the Internet boom at the beginning don't understand the power of the youth. When we look at the Kenzo man, he's of that generation."Jobs wasn't, strictly speaking, an Internet boom-rider, and he was definitely not of the nineties generation. But the late Apple founder found a way to harness and brand the energy of youth and cool in ways that his compatriots didn't see. That's exactly what Leon and Lim have made their signature at Opening Ceremony.Leon spoke of breaking Kenzo down to its basics before building it up, and there was much to this first men's outing thatwasbasic. The building blocks of the Kenzo wardrobe are casual and affordable. Even tailoring, which the designers say is key to their message, is cut to be sporty. (Suit pants are shown with matching blousons as well as blazers.) Key codes from the work of founder Kenzo Takada are invoked—like the insistence on reversible garments, and the preponderance of bright colors and prints, including a medallion print adapted from the archives—but the look is purely the duo's own.That may be a sticking point for the designers moving forward. Leon and Lim are tireless multitaskers whose output includes, in addition to the running of a global retail empire, the design of an Opening Ceremony house line, several collaborations a year, and now Kenzo. Shut one eye, and even with references to label history and a Parisian venue, you might mistake a Kenzo piece for an OC. Now at the helm of an historic label owned by a fashion-world power player, Leon and Lim may need in due course to clarify their new position relative to their existing ones.But that's a quibble.
As a new beginning for the label's menswear, this collection was playful, young, smart, and on trend. Like Jobs, Leon and Lim have a gift for streamlining their ideas into the most user-friendly of products—and making those products intensely desirable.
20 January 2012
Only a season and a half in, Kenzo is firmly in the hands of Humberto Leon and Carol Lim. The two wasted no time putting their distinctive stamp on the French house, and fortune, even in fashion, favors the brave. They began by tweaking the logo, etching KENZO in line scratches, which then got tufted onto capital-K sweaters, turned into animal key chains, and even abstracted to become the basis of a windowpane pattern that appears in both the women's and men's collections. They're extending their touch down almost to the microscopic level.All this isn't to say that Leon and Lim aren't respectful of the house's long-established codes. What's key for Kenzo is what has long been: print, for one; color, for another. "Print is very important for the collection and for the brand," Leon said at its Paris showroom. But the twist comes from the oddly unidentifiable prints he and Lim designed, which merge animal and floral to create something abstract: "We really wanted the print to go away."That's the kind of push and pull that can bring new juice to a longstanding concern like Kenzo, and early signs are promising. The playful new collection of minidresses and suiting separates, most nipped in at the waist in keeping with the season-defining trend, was splashy and fun. Some were piled to the point of excess with bright color (a nod to one of the line's inspirations, fluorescent artist Dan Flavin) or print, but you might chalk that up to lookbook enthusiasm. If there's one thing the designers emphasize, it's ease. "Easy outfits are very Kenzo," they said.
17 January 2012
Surprise was the common reaction to the news this past July that Opening Ceremony's Humberto Leon and Carol Lim were being appointed creative directors of Kenzo. Of all the various hirings and firings, it was one nobody could have predicted. Certainly Leon and Lim were known to be many things: game-changing retailers, merchandisers par excellence, curators of cool, creative collaborators extraordinaire, and designers of their own rapidly growing private label, which now sells to numerous stores. Heading up a Parisian house owned by LVMH, however, is a different task.But judging by their debut at today's infectiously energetic presentation, Leon and Lim may well be up to it. The pair staged a series of mini shows at the house's Rue Vivienne headquarters, around the corner from Kenzo's first Jungle Jap store. The event had the feel of a fashion happening. Leon and Lim's friends lent their talents for the occasion. Jason Schwartzman did the music, Spike Jonze acted as documentarian, and Chloë Sevigny closed the show in a royal blue taffeta jumpsuit and her Mona Lisa smile.As for the rest, the overall assemblage was of rich primary color, texture, and blocked prints, not to mention loads of product in bright tubing: bracelets, mesh totes, fringed bucket bags, and visors. It felt just right, as did the youthful but not young sensibility. What struck you most was the sophisticated level of design, particularly since the label is being retooled to sell at the same sweet-spot price point as Alexander Wang. You can see it in everything from the flared-up back of an anorak to the wave-textured knits. And consider that every brightly hued taffeta piece in the last group is reversible.Leon and Lim took a page from Kenzo Takada's book of merging his own culture with French fashion. "There's definitely a sense of America we want to bring to the brand," said Leon, citing as reference both the casual kit they favor for weekends in upstate New York and the schlocky-sweet seaside towns they visited while growing up. Like Takada, Leon and Lim's aim is to create their own vernacular, not an archival redux. Reactions at the presentation and afterward leaned toward raves. Meanwhile, Pierre-Yves Roussel, the LVMH executive who went through 30 candidates during the appointment process, smiled broadly. His takeaway: "It was exactly what we wanted."
1 October 2011
Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.
5 July 2011
In a show that was as effervescent as the bubbles that cascaded from the ceiling at the finale, Antonio Marras celebrated the good vibrations of an ideal summer. (The soundtrack? The Beach Boys, of course.) The show hit one optimistic note and stayed there. Yves Klein blue, sunshine yellow, and the fuchsia of bougainvillea were the colors of Marras at his least complex— and remember, he's a designer who's most interesting when he's dark, romantic, and twisted. Still, he managed to tell a story that had his characteristic cinematic flair. The collection was, after all, calledA Place in the Sunafter the Liz Taylor classic. (The designer clearly has the actress on the brain. HerSuddenly Last Summerwas the inspiration for his women's Resort line.)The movie in Marras' mind was set in an idealized pre-lapsarian sixties, when pretty proto-jet-setters summered in Portofino or surfed on Waikiki. They wore hibiscus-printed linens with silk scarves knotted round their necks, or shorts suits in that Klein blue (including shoes and socks). They wholeheartedly embraced color and print, from cotton suits in raspberry or leaf green to lounging pajamas in tropical florals. Even their more professional side—layered windowpane checks in gray and navy—was livened up with a pop of fuchsia. Marras turned flowers into a new camo. He reproduced the Hawaiian shirt he'd found in a vintage shop in Texas in its authentic oversize (the swing to supersizing is already in full cry with Fall's Prada and Givenchy collections). It was just the sort of item you'd need for a good-time sing-along with Trini Lopez, whose 1963 smash hitIf I Had a Hammerwas surely making its first-ever appearance on the soundtrack of a fashion show.
24 June 2011
Against a Mexican festival of lights, to the chirrup of mariachi music, Antonio Marras transformed the Kenzo show into a salute to Latin America's haute bohemia: Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, and the female artists who set pulses racing south of the border in the early twentieth century. Marras said the whole scenario came to him in a dream. There was a sense of that in the show, with airy volumes and dark, evocative colors. But the inspiration also fit right into the magpie Kenzo aesthetic, which always raided other places, times, and states of mind to create its own patchwork culture.And patchworked this collection most definitely was, with leather, wool, and fur appearing in the same coat, and a long cardigan collaged from cable knit, chiffon, and lace. A blouse in paisley chiffon was paired with a plaid kilt. The general effect successfully conveyed the image of Frida and her friends playing at devil-may-care dress-up. The key silhouette was a long knit over an even longer chiffon skirt, with gaucho boots to anchor the look. Scatterings of bronze beading and sequins added texture. Marras takes the same seemingly random approach to raw materials in his own collection, but here it was noticeably more lighthearted and poppier—kind of boho light.Marras is contemporary fashion's great romantic. Here, he perhaps got carried away: There were a few too many airy, sheer, smocked floor sweepers. It was dark relief when his own innately gothic spirit found the drama in a blood-red rose print or a black suit in beaded brocade. "I would die for you," the mariachis sang. And that's surely one sentiment with which the designer could identify.
5 March 2011
Creative director Antonio Marras insisted there was nothing archival in theKenzopre-fall collection. If that's the case, then he has well and truly osmosed Kenzo Takada's design sensibility, because the clothes effortlessly touched all the label's bases. The theme was "urban nomad." The Kenzo gypsy was citified, with a dark, sophisticated color palette and a silhouette cinched lean with a wide belt. She was an urban peasant in a pintucked blouse with a print of Japanese peonies sprinkled with sequins, an urban cowgirl in blanket checks, and, when Marras played Kenzo's man-tailored gender games, she looked like a gangster in her fedora. The designer's own favorite look paired a serape with a wide-belted gilet over a turtleneck (and that fedora). Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico, he called it. The turtleneck was Marras' secret weapon. Team it with a cocktail dress and you had any-time-of-day dressing. "That's freedom," said the designer. That's also Kenzo.
26 January 2011
A fantastically complex invitation collected the tools of an old-time British detective's trade in a little tartan box. The leading player in an Agatha Christie whodunit, perhaps? In that light, the show itself could be viewed as an identity parade of potential suspects.Kenzodesigner Antonio Marras has a sure track record in establishing character through clothes. Admittedly, he had a lot of help from the styling in today's show, which further emphasized the period flavor of a Christie thriller. The bowler-hatted guy in the shawl-collared jacket and high-waisted pleated pants looked like a 1940's enforcer. His equivalent in the Scottish Highlands wore—what else?—tartan right down to his leggings. The confident young aristo in a vermilion velvet jacket over a blue shirt, green sweater, and burgundy cords was a regular mille-feuille of color. He could afford his peacockery. The boy in the plain black britches, on the other hand, had no such means. And that young bank clerk in the gray suit with the rust pinstripe? Why was he wearing a black leather biker jacket over his suit?That's enough whodunit to make the point that Marras' collections are scenarios that unspool in the mind, helped by his inner art director's eye for detail. Check the intricacy of his knitwear, collaged and layered to spectacular effect in, say, a cardigan and sweater in a bold broken plaid. Or the subtle clashes of tone and texture in plaid parka on plaid jacket on plaid shirt. The theme gave a retro Heritage Britain flavor to the new collection, but that was scarcely a flaw when Marras offered looks as strong as the fur-collared herringbone coat over silvery glazed denim.
21 January 2011
With the house celebrating its 40th anniversary—and the founder, Kenzo Takada, far away in Brazil working on his home wares—today's honorary birthday boy was Antonio Marras, Kenzo's designer for the past six years. Accordingly, he was subjected to a wearying orgy of congratulations in the torrid backstage heat of the Cirque d'Hiver. But congratulations are indeed due. Marras has lately kicked Kenzo into gear, and the anniversary show recognized that fact, with a first half devoted to the new Spring collection and a second half that mixed pieces from the label's vast archive with his contributions from the more recent past.The thing that stood out about the new work was how unambiguously Marras it was. The designer said the august anniversary was a watershed: From this point on, he hinted, there'd be a new phase. A chrysanthemum jacquard coat or the Hokusai waves that decorated a blouse referenced Japan, but the bead that Marras drew to Sardinia, where he was born and still lives, seemed more meaningful. He is a master at brokering cross-cultural marriages, so here the volume of a kimono matched the floor-sweeping volume of apaysannedress, and the woodblock prints straddled both cultures. But it was Marras' own inclinations that produced the most beautiful pieces: the floral tent dress appliquéd with 3-D roses, the army-surplus waistcoat remodeled with panels of sequins.The show's second half was an extraordinary reminder of what fashion once was, of a certain inventiveness that has gone by the wayside. Marras was looking at the work of Nick Cave—the American performance artist, not the Australian singer—and he envisaged a presentation that stretched out the human figure the way Cave does in his work. So stylist Vanessa Reid collaged together archive pieces with Marras' own work for the label to produce towers of clothing, layer upon layer of Kenzo's signature textures, colors, ethnic prints, topped by folded jackets, hats, anything that would stretch the silhouette still farther. When the models filed out and stood on the Cirque d'Hiver's revolving stage, it was, in the designer's words, "like a music box with 40 ballerinas." The ludicrous beauty of that image defined Kenzo TakadaandAntonio Marras.
4 October 2010
The story of how Kenzo Takada came from Tokyo to Paris in the sixties, opening up a dialogue between the two cities that has been one of the most influential in fashion, will be repeated often this year as the company he founded celebrates its 40th anniversary. For Kenzo's new men's collection, creative director Antonio Marras imagined a journey in the other direction: a French artist traveling to Tokyo for the first time and absorbing the intricacies of Japanese culture into his own style. Given Marras' knack for storytelling, it was a perfect match of designer and inspiration. Without ever veering into archness or costume, he created a wardrobe that had enough idiosyncratic flourish to subtly appeal to any man's latent dandy.At first, he dressed his artist in jackets, pants, and tops in the Mediterranean blue-white-and-stripes story that's emerging as one of the season's most appealing trends. After that, he transported him to the Far East, where artisanal weaving, crocheting, quilting, and dyeing techniques added new depth to familiar Western items. It was striking in a suit transformed by splodges of Japanese watercolor (whether ink, bleach, or paint, that splodge story is another theme for Spring 2011), in outerwear lightly quilted and layered, and in the tone-on-tone use of intense color.A handful of distinctive women, including actress Joana Preiss and model Hannelore Knuts, walked in the show wearing clothes from the men's collection. Marras asked them to choose their own outfits because he wanted to show how pieces designed for a man's body could still look great on women. "That's the freedom of Kenzo, the breaking of rules," he said.
25 June 2010
Antonio Marras' Sardinian passion guarantees that his own collections are intense affairs, but it looks like he's having fun with his second gig at Kenzo, especially with the new Resort collection. It's a big anniversary year for the label, and Marras looked back to Kenzo Takada's earliest work almost four decades ago, when the Japanese designer was busy injecting color and spirit into the uptight Parisian fashion scene. He reworked floral foulard prints from the archives and borrowed one of Kenzo's first shapes—a shirtdress based on a kimono. That silhouette also cropped up again as a trench, and there were shades of old Japan in obi belts. But what Marras really caught beautifully was Kenzo's exuberance. The mixes of stripes and checks, the floor-sweeping sundresses, the colorful knitwear, and those spectacular summery florals made for a winning update on one of fashion's most uplifting legacies.
22 June 2010
With its bricolage of classic men's fabrics and sumptuous decorative elements, Antonio Marras' own collection in Milan was one-of-a-kind poetry. A "laboratorio," he called it. It was a genuine pleasure to see some of the results of his experiments filter down to the Kenzo catwalk, in the languid interplay between feminine and masculine; the magpie trove of paillettes, buttons, and beads that decorated sober gray flannel; and the combinations of leopard and pinstripe. But these signatures were actually so compatible with Kenzo Takada's own aesthetic that it was hardly necessary to draw any clear distinction. The design of the runway said it all: willow branches woven into a spreading canopy of trees, representing the evolution of the Kenzo ideal under its current creative director.Marras is a free spirit, untouched by passing trends, which makes him one of the few designers who can get away with claiming a quest for liberty as the reason for his collection. Freedom here meant the loosest, easiest of shapes—usually layered—in fabrics that were a patchwork of florals, plaids, embroidery, and appliqué. The pursuit of ease yielded an unfortunate jumpsuit or two, but the mood was otherwise very much the casual hippie- and vintage-influenced chic of the seventies style icons that Marras name-checked—women like Tina Chow, Marisa Berenson, Florinda Bolkan, even Farrah Fawcett, some of whom undoubtedly wore Kenzo the first time around. Toss a pinstriped jacket over a patchworked smock dress and you get the point. The hair—a tangle of pretty curls, often topped with a man's fedora—underlined it. With his own collection, at least, it's hard not to feel that Marras is radically underrated. The crowd at Kenzo today included the omnipresent Lindsay Lohan, who seemed much more agreeable than she's been the rest of the week. That possibly suggests the tide of attention may be turning Marras' way.
7 March 2010
Antonio Marras is one of fashion's congenital romantics, given to grand gestures that stir the emotions. The backdrop for his latest collection for Kenzo was a huge golden disc—the sun hanging heavy over the Sahara. At the finale, it literally exploded in a shower of gold filaments that rained down on the catwalk while models walked in juicily shaded chiffons—aqua, peach, hot pink—with heads wrapped like nomad princesses. It was a spectacular conclusion to a show that took as its starting point the Middle Eastern excursions of the early twentieth-century English adventuress Freya Stark, then stirred in a little of Bertolucci's filmThe Sheltering Sky. So there was a Europe-meets-ethnic vibe to the clothes, which was so perfectly in tune with the ethos of the house that it underlined how appropriate a choice Marras was for this job. You could pair the striped drop-crotch pants with the madras trench and you'd have a consummate update of the Kenzo code.The designer's own inclinations toward a darkish glamour were evident in the floral print he matched with a man-tailored jacket in black lamé, or a draped dress trailing threads of old gold Lurex. His theme of the desert explorer also inspired much easier pieces: big shirts cinched with wide belts, army shorts belted with rope, a natural linen shirtdress. The sheer shift with a sequined camo pattern might be a stretch for the Sahara, but it artfully elevated this season's military mood.
6 October 2009
Antonio Marras' response to fashion's fiscal woes was an escape into the romance of Mother Russia—with winsomely detailed show notes rolled up inside littlematryoshkadolls that waited on everyone's seat. A passing nod toDoctor Zhivagocued the designer's focus on love in a time of revolution: For every folkloric flounce there was a Bolshevik reference, too. It made for a collection of distinct contrasts: the pouf-sleeved, tiered dress in a gilded floral print that opened the show, say, versus a jacket and skirt of transfigured military fatigues. An army jacket over a floor-sweeping skirt brought to mind Diane Keaton inReds, but Marras was rarely that literal. One apparatchik ensemble was banded in fur; peasant patchwork was quilted into a high-necked coat-dress; another coat might have been suitable for the front line if it hadn't been sequined in gold.There was a lot of inspiration in Marras' source materials—all those "lonely dachas," as he put it, filled with embroideries, tapestries, and carpets. He ramped up the florals in a series of draped dresses, but the show's doses of floor-length action made it hard to escape the lingering sense that the air in those lonely dachas might be a bit stuffy. A cable-knit dress studded with holly berries (that's holly, not Halle) scarcely blew out the cobwebs.
10 March 2009
Taking Puccini¿sTurandotas inspiration, Kenzo¿s Antonio Marras sent out a fanciful collection of fall clothes that taken one by one had an insouciant charm. But shown at great length and often layered, as they were, the effect became treacly. In that famous opera, the protagonist is a Chinese princess who thinks nothing of ordering the death of a suitor who can't solve her riddles; Marras could have used some of that ruthlessness when it came to editing his show.Pinafore dresses in embroidered silk, mohair knits of roses and peonies, wrap coats and frogging details seemed in keeping with the theme. Even a camouflage vest backed in hot pink could be said to reflect the wild side of Marras¿ muse. There was less explanation, though, for a double-layer pleated tartan skirt, or a plaid coat-dress.For the finale, a giant lantern at the back of the runway lit up and slid open to reveal the models arrayed on steps behind a blooming cherry tree. As they took one last lap, thousands of tiny petals exploded from overhead confetti machines—thank you, LVMH. Here at least, Marras stayed true to his operatic inspiration.
3 March 2006
With cardboard waves, clouds, and seagulls as a backdrop and a boardwalk/runway elevated above acres of sand, Antonio Marras' spring Kenzo collection set off prettily from Brittany and docked in Provence. It wasn't all plain sailing, though, because along the way, there was an implausible stopover at Euro Disney, not to mention a quick tour of the children's nursery.Marras began then with a saucy nautical theme: Navy-and-white-striped clingy knits and tailored sailor suits came with matching berets. To finish, he sent out floor-length silhouettes: floral gowns with pink gingham accents, a crocheted suit, and a lacy pinafore dress that, topped with a straw hat, called to mind Little Bo Peep. Somewhere in the middle, a couple of polka-dot chiffon looks were accessorized with Minnie Mouse ears.After their exits, the models made their way onto a cardboard ship waiting in the wings. When the last one swaggered aboard, wearing a man's tuxedo that made one think of the ill-fated couple in Marguerite Duras' novelThe Lover,the foghorn bleated, and the boat came into view. Then, while confetti blew sideways from a wind machine, the girls disembarked for a final lap around the boardwalk. It made for good theater, though Marras might do well to remember that modern women are less interested in costumes than well-designed clothes. He had plenty of the latter, but a little less eccentricity would have gone a long way.
7 October 2005
What do you get when you enlist a Sardinia-based multitasker to design a Japanese label owned by a French conglomerate? A multi-culti 72-look extravaganza, complete with a patchwork of rich tapestries for a backdrop and an extra-wide runway lined with lush greenery. For his third outing for LVMH-owned Kenzo, Antonio Marras (who presents his own collection in Milan and is also the creative director of Trend les Copains) sent out a grand tour's worth of embroideries, florals, lamés, tartans, velvets, and crochets.It was a rich panoply, held together rather loosely with grand volumes, acid-bright colors, and thin hippie-esque headbands stretched across the models' foreheads. Perhaps too rich—some excellent pieces, like tweedy riding jackets, needlepoint-embellished djellaba tunics (paired sillily with plaid pants), and tulip-sleeve turtleneck sweaters, among others, got lost in the fray. But there was no missing Marisa Berenson, who closed the show wearing a floor-length floral dress and a fur-trimmed cape with flats in true nouveau boho fashion.
4 March 2005
"Romantic rock" was Gilles Rosier's point of reference for Kenzo's exploration of hard-edged, dramatic silhouettes.Rosier distilled many of the prevailing trends of the season and assembled them in a pastiche of brooding suits, pegged trousers, pleated and voluminous skirts, drop-waist jackets and flat-ankle booties.Acknowledging the house's tradition of mixing and matching ethnic references, Rosier also showed a series of Middle Eastern-inspired prints and dainty floral appliqués that at times got lost in the mix. While several individual pieces will work fine on their own, the collection failed to create a lasting impression. The Kenzo label still has ground to cover in order to develop a strong and relevant image for today.
10 March 2001
Gilles Rosier's collection for Kenzo was based on a play between lightness and geometry. Fluid chiffon dresses were dip-dyed and layered, chiffon ones smocked and ruffled, while harder chocolate leather skirts were embellished with graphic circular orange insets. Rosier also delivered several unpretentious, girly white dresses, trousers and wrap tops that will be perfect for a day at the beach: Throw them over one of his siren-inspired bathing suits.Rosier is still on his way to modernizing Kenzo's considerable legacy of mixing and matching diverse cultural references. There were plenty of good pieces in the collection, but many of them got lost in a sea of repetition. The show would've gained strength if it had been edited down to the essential looks.
11 October 2000
"I tried to imagine what would happen if different minorities from all over the world met across time and space," said Gilles Rosier about his first solo collection for Kenzo. For his fast-paced, visually arresting show, Rosier reworked classic Kenzo favorites—loose shapes, colorful prints and patterns—into urban, modern looks that pay tribute to the house's heritage while decidedly moving ahead.Supple leather coats and skirts were given a punk touch when paired with lace-up ankle boots, patchwork plaids and batwing tops; there was also a graphic '80s influence in a series of large geometric-motif dresses. A touch of the orient became apparent through the Japanese orchid prints, slit kimono sleeves and obi sashes that were seamlessly woven in. It was a successful, eclectic collection for Rosier, who proved that he can create a modern image for Kenzo while remaining true to his mentor's roots.
1 March 2000