Sacai A/W 2014

Sacai designer Chitose Abe has single-handedly ushered in the industry's current fixation with hybrid clothing. However, nobody to this day handles it with as much creativity and wearability as she does. Only Abe is able to take brightly printed orange and red houndstooth plaids and cut them up with astrakhan shoulder flaps, curly lambswool arms and fluffy Mongolian cuffs, and manage to make the entire confection not only deeply delicious, but absolutely digestible as a practical coat proposal. Perhaps being a woman helps in grounding her collections in functional ease. In any case, she continues to bring her rigorously original eye to the runway, this season working with layers of optically-printed silk with rows of dots and checks, as well as Aztec patterned wools. The pattern was cut into the wool bodies of cropped jackets, or on the fronts of sweaters that featured cotton poplin backs. Cable sweaters and cool biker jackets also got snipped into shreds, creating magnificently sculpted wool jackets with peplum backs and leather arms, or wool slit-skirts with pleated chiffon and naughty lace backs. Oftentimes one doesn't understand where one garment ends and the next begins at a Sacai show; was that a cape, a dress, or a jacket that just walked by? No one knows for sure until one fondles the clothes with bare hands. This is part of the fun of this designer's visual game and why she continues to rank as one of our top talents in Paris.

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans