In Paris, the limitless inventiveness of Japanese designers

What is it in the air of Paris that has always attracted Japanese designers? The spring-summer 2024 women’s collections week, which continues until October 3, serves as a showcase for many Japanese designers, who come to present their collections. And it’s not from yesterday. In 1965, Issey Miyake moved to Paris. He studied fashion at the Parisian Chamber of Commerce school and presented his first collection in 1973. The previous year, it was a certain Kenzo Takada who unveiled his joyful creations full of multicultural references.

“Historically, Paris has always had a strong power of attraction for foreign creators. Paris was, and remains, the nerve center of world fashion, and Japanese designers, like Issey Miyake, Kenzo and later Rei Kawakubo, wanted not only to approach it, but also to contribute to this heritage. In Paris, they also found great creative freedom”analyzes Serge Carreira, fashion historian and collaborator of the Fédération de la haute couture et de la mode.

And this season is no exception to the rule. At Yohji Yamamoto, who has presented his collections in Paris since 1981, the look is airy and is expressed in draped and transparent ensembles, always in black. We find his touch in the construction of the dresses, as if made of several intertwined sections of clothing, or from which strips of leather or lace escape. A poet of clothing, Yamamoto continues to take his time – the models take very small steps – at a time when fashion has never been so fast.

Another label to combine lyricism, that of Issey Miyake, who died in 2022 and whose creations are today signed Satoshi Kondo, one of his closest collaborators. The collection revolves around intangible concepts, such as wind or light. But, on the catwalk, this gives beautiful flowing knitted clothes, others twisted around the body or even draped and pressed dresses, which give the silhouette unusual volumes.

“There is great poetry in Japanese fashionexplains Nathalie Ours, long-time collaborator of Yohji Yamamoto and director of the Paris office of PR Consulting, a press agency specializing in fashion. But the center of their remarks remains the clothing and the cut. There is little or no decoration or grandiloquence in their parades. Their fashion is close to design or architecture because they are constantly inventing new forms. »

Extreme clothing peeling

And the one who excels in this field is undoubtedly Rei Kawakubo, who, with her label Comme des Garçons, has been trying to shake up Parisian fashion since 1981. This season, the Japanese continues her long experimentation around shapes, with humor. His eighteen “ball” silhouettes, composed of mixes of colors and prints – flowers, tartan, diamonds, paintings, etc. – stacked on sections of fabric, are all proof that his creative freedom does not run dry.

In her wake, Rei Kawakubo brought several Japanese designers to Paris, some of whom were her close collaborators and created their own brand under the leadership of the designer and her husband, Adrian Joffe. Junya Watanabe is one of them. He presents the brand that has borne his name in the capital since 2001. This season, the punk subculture fan stood out for his extreme dissection of clothing, offering dresses with exaggerated geometric shapes, made up of tubes and triangles of fabric, wool jackets deconstructed to excess, with the collar at the bottom, or even leather jackets draped in the back.

At Noir Kei Ninomiya, a label launched in 2012 by Kei Ninomiya, another disciple of Rei Kawakubo who has been showing in Paris since 2012, the first silhouettes, black leather harnesses on long petticoats, tend towards a dark collection… But it was without count on the magic of the latest silhouettes. Dresses made up of thousands of small sections of black and white tulle floating in the air indeed impose a magical cadence.

Finally, Jun Takahashi, who has been showing in Paris with his brand Undercover since 2002. Everything about him is delicate and poetic, starting with his mastery of transparency, which he applies to long petticoats revealing shorts and trench coats. or even airy polka dot blouses. Beautiful straight coats and tulle skirts reproduce works by the dreamlike German painter Neo Rauch or his own, enigmatic portraits which were exhibited in Tokyo this summer. Note the last silhouettes, three corset dresses containing terrariums, with earth, flowers and real fluttering butterflies.

This conglomerate of Japanese designers gives Parisian fashion week a dimension of its own, where creativity has no limits. The audience for these parades is also unique. “These designers indeed have true disciples, a community of followers who wear their clothes with pride! »concludes Nathalie Ours.