Shinyakozuka (Q9132)
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Shinyakozuka is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Shinyakozuka |
Shinyakozuka is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Shinya Kozuka knows how to set a scene. In the past two seasons he’s treated us to a full moon and a swimming pool in the pouring rain, and tonight he erected his runway in a gigantic makeshift cage outside Tokyo’s National Stadium, so that the sound of cicadas chirruping in the trees filled the night air. The show marked 10 years of his brand, and he called it “picturesque or die.”It’s an apt mantra for Kozuka, whose work deals most overtly in whimsy—see the birthday party balloons and cartoonish cat sweaters here—but with a disarming emotional, almost adolescent sensitivity that fizzes beneath the surface. This collection, he explained, was him looking back on the last decade and figuring out where it goes from here. “It feels like we looked back to our first season and condensed everything we’ve cultivated up until now,” he said backstage after the show.Onto the clothes, then, which were manic. Colorful miniature houses were crocheted into knitted polo tops or embroidered onto blazers, rainbow tweed was made into jumpsuits and Chanel-esque jackets, and bright daubs of paint were smattered across sweatpants, hoodies, and smock dresses. Toile de jouy spread in pastoral scenes across canvas coats and knitted sweaters, while quaint sketches of buildings or anthropomorphic animals decorated others, like tableaux from a children’s storybook. The overall effect was one of uninhibited joy and weirdness, which Kozuka somehow wrangled into a compelling collection.Blue—deep, Yves Klein blue—is a recurring reference for the designer, and remained a strong touchpoint this time around, appearing throughout the show (one model burst forth from a painted ultramarine canvas that doubled as a coat). It didn’t stop there: blue were the lights that bathed the space, and blue were the envelopes that contained the show notes, hand-painted by the designer himself. Naturally, the runway was blue, too. “I have two pairs of best friends: two from my hometown [in Osaka] and two I met before I came to Tokyo. If I imagine them as a color, it’s blue,” Kozuka said. “It’s a color I want to cherish.”As the show ended and we filed outside into the summer night, a spectacular show of celebratory fireworks lit up the sky; they turned out to be from an idol concert that had been going on just across the street. The fireworks weren’t intended for Kozuka, of course, but that hardly mattered. They might as well have been.
2 September 2024
If the weather gods were on Shinya Kozuka’s side at his last show in the summer, tonight it seemed they were demanding payback. On possibly the most miserable rainy evening of the year so far, the designer held his fall show in the (drained, but still very wet) outdoor pool of the Tokyo Prince Hotel.On arrival we were herded into a nearby cafeteria building to escape the deluge, as staff handed out translucent plastic rain ponchos. Then we filed outside to take our places around the edge of the swimming pool. Hundreds of us sat there shivering like damp ghosts, bathed in blue light from the pool as Tokyo Tower blazed red into the night sky above. It was quite the scene.When Kozuka’s models finally came out and sauntered around the empty pool, the inclement weather almost seemed like it was by design, the models’ scuba flippers splashing lightly in the rain.The pool came about because Kozuka had taken up swimming after his last show as a way to get in shape, and said he came up with many of his ideas for this season’s collection while in the water. There were trompe l’oeil fur-printed jackets, nylon sewed to look like cable knit, and Kozuka’s own festive take on Fair Isle, which appeared across oversized sweaters, cozy hoodies, and gown-like coats. Then came badge-covered jackets, sequin dresses, pinstripe suits, and one wispy poncho that rippled like water made cloth.Overall there is an original sense of creativity to what Kozuka brings—his clothes truly don’t look like anyone else’s. But there was so much floating around here that, occasionally, it felt underdeveloped. Kozuka has a lot of ideas, but he needs to edit more.Still, there was plenty to enjoy, and the rain couldn’t dampen Kozuka’s spirit. Spilling over with inspiration as it was, the designer had named the collection his Winter Feast. And though we went home cold and soggy, we ultimately left feeling well fed.
6 March 2024
Shinya Kozuka’s spring 2024 show took place in the vast outdoor plaza of the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium Sub Arena, where he led us on a somnambulant stroll under the full moon. It was fitting: Kozuka’s message this season was pulled from a story in which the writer Natsume Soseki translated “I love you” to the infinitely more poetic “the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?” Not every designer can bend the skies to his will, but the weather gods were clearly on Kozuka’s side tonight.Back down on earth, there was some polishing left to do. The models were at first too far away to see, and when they did come close enough the floodlighting was so one-sided that their fronts were cast in shadow. When you could see them, the clothes occasionally had so much going on that it was hard to parse the details.On the other hand, what Shinya Kozuka does is loveable precisely because it’s all a bit mad and wonky. A Central Saint Martins alum, he has something of a London sensibility about his clothes in the way that they can seem a little hodgepodge and experimental (his inspirations span from Raf Simons to Margaret Howell to Dragonball), but are ultimately charming—just look at those honk-shoo sleeping caps!Many of the pieces were decorated with Kozuka’s original sketches, which he does on his iPad, and which look like scribbly toile de jouy. “I always make pictures of what I’m thinking about or inspired by, and develop the collection from there,” he said. This time they depicted the banal beauty of daily life, and so the oversized tailoring and denim were printed with scenes you might see when on the street: an old lady walking her shiba inu; the welcoming sign of a tonkatsu restaurant; merry-makers staggering home from an izakaya. “I think that clothes are a part of the scenery of a person’s life,” he said. “Like when you go on a first date and confess your feelings to someone, the clothes you wear become part of that experience.Kozuka had also been thinking about Yves Klein blue, and noticed how closely the color matched the blue-and-gold aluminium cans of The Premium Malt’s beer that he often sips on his walks. This, he felt, made for a familiar point of reference, and served as the color palette for the collection. The resulting broderie anglaise shirts, gold brocade pajamas, tinselly cardigans, and blue silk bombers were individually special, and may well be worn on plenty of those first dates come spring.
31 August 2023