Can luxurious be punk? Can luxurious be hilarious? These have been a number of the extra highfalutin questions raised by this night’s Kenzo present at Maxim’s. Probably the most urgent query of all was: how do they stroll in these? As one male mannequin confirmed when he took a tumble within the season’s hyper-stacked clown footwear, the reply was: very rigorously.
LVMH bought Kenzo in 1993 for $80 million. The late founder Kenzo Takada, who was a frequenter of Maxim’s, exited in 1999. The label stays an enigmatic outlier within the luxurious group’s portfolio that has loved passing moments within the business solar (these tiger sweats) however whose essence has all the time sat incongruously in opposition to the group’s different overwhelmingly extra self-important, heritage, and luxe model propositions. Which begs one other query: what can Kenzo do this its stablemates can not?
This present articulated the reply that inventive director Nigo and his Givenchy-alum design director Joshua Bullen (who Nigo is refreshingly unbothered about permitting to say his half for the model) are placing along with rising confidence. “Before everything, it’s about having enjoyable,” stated Nigo by an interlocutor, pre-show. Added Bullen: “It’s about not treating style as significantly as different individuals do, and on the identical time making a really elevated assortment. And it’s about mixing attitudes and creating power.” Added Nigo: “There’s a number of me within the assortment: ’90s Nigo.”
Very ’90s Nigo have been the pave textured belt buckles that variously spelled ‘KENZO’ or ‘WOOF’ or ‘MEOW.’ This was only one aspect in a group that was as frenziedly layered in its eclecticism because the mash-up soundtrack produced by Hiroshi Fujiwara. There was a swaggering late punk, early New Romanticism in a number of the menswear and womenswear, particularly the badge caught berets, the buccaneering blouses, and the complete silky pants. There was Serge Gainsbourg loucheness within the quilted dressing robes worn as outerwear. Micro moire puff skirts and micro-bloomers had some very straight-eye coquettishness, as did the swimwear that peeked over pant hems as an equal to final season’s lingerie. A good dose of easy-access surrealism was there within the tie-print knit tees. Borderline infantilism got here by within the very-faux, fake fur tiger coats and fits, full with tail, plus the marginally creepy tiger meets bunny narrative that was an try and storyboard a connection and character into the method.