This assortment is Ryunosuke Okazaki’s first in 18 months, and it’s named 002, making it his third after 000 and 001. The primary two had been proven on the runway, however this time he selected to current his creations by images. “I see the runway as a spot the place individuals put on and stroll in my garments, however I additionally see the garments as sculptures, and so I wished individuals to have a look at them as in the event that they had been a static murals,” mentioned the 27-year-old designer from a showroom in Harajuku.
For 002 he had landed on the marble material of Historical Greek statues as a place to begin. “Draping in sculpture reveals a relationship between individuals and fabric that has continued from historical instances, so I took a contemporary method and as a substitute used fabric to make sculptures,” he defined. Within the run as much as the gathering, he’d been making (and promoting) geometric sculptures from wooden, and spoke of how working with the tougher medium had given him a brand new appreciation for the pliability of material.
Remarkably, Okazaki doesn’t sketch out his designs beforehand and even think about the completed product; as a substitute he lets his arms do the work subconsciously, threading plastic poles by hollows of material and permitting them to settle into symmetrical shapes. This time they appeared wrapped across the head like alien chrysalises, whereas others blossomed out from the physique in nice scribbly prospers, the cycle of sculpture to fabric, fabric to physique, and physique to sculpture accomplished again and again.
Although the Greek statue inspiration supplied some extent of distinction this season, Okazaki continued to attract on the historical past of Shintoism, which finds the existence of gods in nature. The outlines of cicadas (a recurring motif in each Greek mythology and Japanese tradition) in just a few of the seems to be appeared apparent—not less than to this author—however Okazaki laughed and mentioned he hadn’t realized. “I feel the explanation that individuals see bugs, or see one thing alive in my work is as a result of I really feel a way of life dwelling there,” he mentioned.
Certainly, there’s something life-affirming about his course of, which reads extra like primordial communion with nature than vogue design (he has mentioned earlier than that creating for him is akin to prayer). In that, Okazaki is an anachronistic artistic who appears someway each historical and nicely forward of his time. All of the luckier for the remainder of us then that his time occurs to be now.
