Sunday evening was one thing of a homecoming for Masu’s Shinpei Goto. Formally opening Tokyo Style Week with a screening of a movie of his Paris debut on the males’s exhibits in January, the designer gathered Tokyo’s trend trade and his rising neighborhood of followers—referred to as Masu Boys—to have fun. (The truth that Masu’s followers have their very own identify goes to indicate how a lot of an affect the model has made within the seven years since Goto, who’s simply 31, based it). The mannequins dressed within the assortment that dotted the rows of seats within the makeshift cinema had been at instances indistinguishable from the friends that sat beside them.
“There have been instances once I felt extraordinarily lonely whereas I used to be designing the gathering, however I discovered a form of luxurious in that loneliness,” Goto mentioned on the screening. He had imagined a melancholy hero as his muse, and, wanting on the garments, it was simple to image a vampire prince or a bishonen Batman perching moodily on a skyscraper someplace within the rain. Stone angels had been printed onto knits, and leather-based vests had been minimize in a form paying homage to bat wings, whereas baseball caps with cutout peaks forged impish shadows over the face.
It made for a well-rounded darkish fantasy with loads of particulars during which to please. Peek the additional buttons on the jacket cuffs that elongate the arms, or see how the rhinestones on the flared denims imitate the spatter of kicked-up rainfall.
Displaying abroad for the primary time had given Goto pause about how binary the worldwide trend enterprise can nonetheless be about gender (Masu is formally a menswear model, however Goto finds the time period stifling). “Patrons will ask me whether or not I’m promoting girls’s or males’s clothes, however, in Japan, every kind of individuals put on it,” he mentioned. “That [fluidity] feels pure right here, however I believe folks from different international locations can discover it unsettling.”
There’s an intentional softness to the masculinity Goto proposes with Masu, which subversively lends his clothes a way of confident swagger. Spangled hoodies, spiderweb-print skirts, shimmery velvet tailoring and denim laser-cut with floral patterns all paint the image: These are garments for heartbroken heartbreakers of any persuasion.
Goto hopes his work will encourage a much less inhibited method to clothes, particularly overseas. “If folks can really feel extra freedom about what they select to put on via my garments, I’ll contemplate it a victory,” he mentioned. Right here in Tokyo, he’s already gained. Tonight’s presentation was attended by some 500 Masu Boys who had been all wearing his garments—and from Gen-Z {couples} to veteran trend followers, all of them seemed nice. Name it Masu attraction.
