Animal Pleat

>> In my Antwerp Six/eighties Japanese wave obsessed youth, I sort of made a loose promise to myself that should I reach the age of 50, I will find my inner serene self and be clothed in a uniform consisting exclusively of Yohji Yamamoto, Ann Demeulemeester, Dries van Noten, the more conservative bits of Comme des Garcons’ universe and Issey Miyake Pleats Please for expanding waistlines.  That list of designers probably will have a few other additions and I’ve still got twenty years to go but I’ll probably renege on that promise, making a few adjustments along the way.  But I might be reaching that aged 50, sartorial utopia sooner than I might think.  Wearing a heap of Comme des Garcons.  Check.  Going to Antwerp in two weeks time to make a Dries van Noten Het Modepaleis pilgrimage.  Check.  Getting bang into Issey Miyake Pleats Please AW14.  Check.  Specifically, it’s Issey Miyake’s collaboration with renowned Japanese graphic designer legend Kazumasa Nagai, which launched in Japan back in April.  Ok, so there are animals, an array of colours and vivid graphics.  Not quite the serene elderly female gallerist look I was thinking of when I was hypothesising my look for my 50s.

Still, better to get started early.  I’ve long had a love of Pleats Please pieces as clever wardrobe saviours and layering pieces.  Their artist collabs have thus far eluded me but this stellar one with Nagai is definitley on my hit list.  They’ve not hit stores in Europe yet but pieces have already started popping up all over eBay.  The collaboration was prompted by Miyake having seen Nagai’s 2013 solo exhibition which included a series of posters from 1993 entitled “Life”.  Miyake’s obsession with pushing the technical boundaries of fabric married up with this concept of “Life” well – instead of simply treating Nagai’s work as static graphics, he sought to breathe life into this collaboration.  The result is an exuberant use of Nagai’s core animal headed-figurines in five bold colours of red, blue, yellow, green and purple on a range of garments and accessories.  As with all Pleats Please garments, in flat 2-D form, they lie still and and on the wearer, with their movements and differing body shapes, the simple 2D forms suddenly shift and change.  With this collaboration, the inner child in me collides with a label destined to accompany me into old age.  I guess ageing with style will be a more complicated process than that naive promise I made all those years ago.

The whole line has been making its colourful presence be known at Issey Miyake stores and department stores all over Japan and also coincides with a Kazumasa Nagai exhibition that has just come to an end in Tokyo.  Before it officially hits stores elsewhere though, like I said, eBay has already got quite a few pieces up already.

 

Here are some example of Nagai’s work – I love the incredibly restrained way and distinct style of depicting animals with stark geometrics.