Sudden downpours in Tokyo’s Shibuya create painterly visions of the bustling city, the colors of its flashy billboards seemingly melting, taxis sparkling while speeding through the urban landscape.
Onitsuka Tiger creative director Andrea Pompilio sought to distill that essence into this handsome fall collection — opened by a mood-boosting dance performance by the Avantgardey dance crew — with oversize, hourglass-y woolen coats coated as if drenched in water and bias-cut ruffled or handkerchief dresses bearing puddle-evoking, mud-colored sequins.
The office skirt suit in a technical pinstriped fabric that opened the show resonated deeply with the ongoing indoor-outdoor conversation happening in fashion, as did the running sets layered under topcoats, polar fleeces in double cashmere morphing into outerwear pieces in their own right and sneakers turned into sports-ready rockabilly creepers, and hiking-meet-derby styles.
The demure palette of mud, rusty brown and gunmetal gray was only spiced up by several evolutions of Onitsuka Tiger’s distinctive yellow, for instance in the lime rib knit vests paired with workwear pants and chartreuse duffle coats.
Pompilio’s ambition seems to be rooted in providing a new fashion template for the Japanese brand, bridging its sportswear roots toward what the designer does best — plying fabrics and offbeat silhouettes into a youthful, yet bourgeois, vision.
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