Yosuke Aizawa knows the right time to leave a party. The 48-year-old, who began his career as an assistant to Junya Watanabe at Comme des Garçons and founded White Mountaineering in 2006 in a tiny studio in Daikanyama, today showed his final collection for the brand.
Long before gorpcore entered the fashion vernacular, Aizawa’s technical gear championed an innovative and high-brow design approach that has felt totally at home on the runway, and gone on to influence a generation of outerwear designers. “I always dreamed of creating my own brand and showing in Paris, and I’ve achieved that goal,” he said backstage before today’s show. “The past 20 years have flown by. I’m so grateful to all the staff who have been involved with me up until now. It’s been a wonderful time.”
This farewell outing, which took place over two floors of a gritty concrete warehouse, was one of his most confident. He called the collection Post De Stijl after the Dutch art movement, and envisioned it as an abstraction of De Stijl in which the primary colors of the period were restrained, resulting in a palette that included an on-brand spectrum of space-agey cream and greige, through to clayish browns, merlot, greens, and some satisfying pops of grape purple. Aizawa’s consummate talent for innovative pattern work and futuristically chic silhouettes was on show throughout, particularly evident in the pieces of funnel-hooded outerwear and the sleek tailored pants.
The brand’s future currently remains unclear, but Aizawa leaves it in good shape; last season’s sales were the best ever, he said. The designer himself hopes to spend more time on a wider set of projects: in recent years he has worked with Toyota to create uniforms, has designed a space for Not a Hotel in Kitakaruizawa, and works as a professor at Tama Art University, so he’ll find plenty to keep him busy. “Fashion design is my core, so of course I’ll continue doing that, and maybe I’ll come back here in a different form,” he said.
At the finale, a parade of 14 models wearing a spectrum of jewel-toned crew-necks came out at once, and the soundtrack changed to “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone. After Aizawa had finished his final sprint around the runway to whoops and cheers, he raised his arms in thanks, opened a can of beer he’d stashed in his pocket and took a well-deserved swig. “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life, for me,” cooed Simone over the sound system.
