When you let things happen instead of forcing them to, the results can be beautiful. This was the insight that hit Satoshi Kondo when he noticed a particular stone in his path during a recent hike. Time and the elements had sculpted it so strikingly that he was moved to scoop it up and take it to the Miyake studio. As he observed in his note today: “The will to create, and the will to allow. In that indefinite relationship lies infinite potential.”
This was a slow show, very zen with abstract background tunes, but quite gripping to gaze at. The white, red, black or blue bustiers and bodices that framed the collectsion were made of layers of glued paper which were then lacquered by artisans in Kyoto. Their hard, glossy, curved surfaces sat stonily against the softer materials of fabrics and flesh that were placed around and within them.
The models wore hats whose pressed irregular fold and flyaway asymmetric brims looked improvised. You could see in the way that dresses were shaped to have apparently grown above the shoulder or jutted outwards from the waist that bodies were a starting point around which the garments were set free to follow their own course. Pants were furled asymmetrically around the leg, either at the front or to the back. Chalkstripe suiting looked as if it had tailored itself.
There was a series of knits with unconstructed yet highly defined linebacker shoulder silhouettes: these slightly broke the concept but looked kind of great with powerfully colored fitted skinny pants: borderline yoga capris. One model in an oxblood coat walked with her hands aloft, holding the corners of the bolt of fabric from which the coat had been cut, still attached. Two coats in blue and yellow were so flat of contour and papery of texture that they resembled human envelopes. There were some beautifully complex white pleated pieces that looked like riots of fungus or coral. A series of garments cut from panels of fabric with curved arcs of pleat resembled fossils. This collectsion demanded similes.
There were certain garments that would be challenging to wear in the day-to-day. These included a knit sweater with conjoined sleeves and a bulbous growth in the crook of one elbow, and two examples of that stone-cold conceptual fashion cliché classic, the one legged trouser. On the flipside, many of these pieces looked positively timeless. In general the more specific the origin reference and style of a garment, the more perishably placeable in its moment in time it becomes: Kondo’s evolutionary exploration of clothing—an exercise in undesign—felt almost beyond style.
