Mood board: Guests sat on pressed plywood and MDF boxes that slotted over the seat of French bar chairs, interrupting the black lacquer spindles with a hard modern line. The floor was strewn with haphazard rugs, embodying creative director Chitose Abe’s hybrid approach. Abe started the season musing on Dude’s observation from The Big Lebowski: ’That rug really tied the room together.’ It underlined her modular aesthetic, to jumble familiar forms and archetypes into complex, layered pieces. The traditional met the techno.
Best in show: The merging together of recognisable staples tricked the eye. Abe’s clothes had a studied playfulness and there was a certain nonchalance to her military jackets cut into shirts and the cable knit jumpers spliced into zip-up sports jackets. An over-sized denim jacket was attached to a shrunken version of the same; a child’s size MA1 jacket was lain over an over-sized adult version. Each piece was meticulously engineered. Cuffs from a denim jacket were cut off and applied to a striped shirt. Suit lining was used for sleeves, trouser hems interrupted with bands of contrasting fabric.
Team work: Prints – sourced from the archives of Hawaiian shirt legend Duke Kahanamoku – appeared on shirting, trousers and outerwear. The sense of the sea and the spirit of adventure was in the air. Models wore t-shirts made from a newly developed Brewed Protein Blended sustainable fabric by Japanese bio-tech research lab Spiber. Their fronts featured ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ graphics by Fabien Baron. New for S/S 2020 was a patchwork mountaineering pant made with Gramicci. §
