Although France’s Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library) Richelieu site is positioned on the same street as the Kenzo studio, it made a great venue for tonight’s show for more than mere convenience. As Nigo had earlier explained, this Kenzo collection worked to connect multiple cultural references in order to concoct something that hit the eye as fresh rather than derivative. The roof of this magnificent reading room, hosting its first show for some years, is decorated with some of the cities whose culture has contributed to the knowledge its books contain: Babylon, Vienna, Rome, Carthage, and more. And while the twin poles of this collection were very much still Paris and Tokyo—as Cornelius’s original soundtrack reminded us—this Nigo production did seem to travel further than ever before.
The check was a Nigo adaptation of a tatami mat print, while the twist-stemmed floral was a version of karakusa, a popular pattern for packing fabrics that came to Japan from China and reputedly before that from Egypt. Nigo scattered shearling mittens, aviators and strapped jerkins— explorer wear—around deconstructed treated denim workwear. Some coats were borderline robes and came with back-strapped belting details and open apertures under their arm holes in treatments including an ’80s-style acid wash. Worn under one of these, a knit cardigan impressed with an image of spiral star systems enforced the sense we were going far, far away.
Another reference for Nigo was school uniforms. Here red and green collarless blazers inspired by his own student wardrobe came draped with a chain of Kenzo themed institutional buttons. It was interesting to see how this piece intersected with his close collaborator Pharrell Williams’s Pont Neuf jacket: while they weren’t a million miles away from each other, they made a different sense. There were also short and long duffle coats—originally seafaring outerwear from the far north—woven in tatami check jacquard.
Over time, Nigo’s Kenzo womenswear has become less unisex and more conventionally “feminine,” as he adapts to producing a category that was new to him when he started here in 2021. Tonight’s strongest pieces included rib-knit mini-dresses with rounded accentuated hips cinched by wide leather belts and tatami print dresses with sweetheart necklines. Some of these came with chunky metal neckpieces that looked like wrenched-open versions of the cover art for Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells.”
More chest pieces in padded fabrics with straps were, for sure, inspired by Japanese protective attire but also made you think—at least if you were in this show’s audience—a little of Craig Green’s London-sited interpretations of similar source material. There were hints of more established cross-cultural fare in letterman jackets emblazoned with Kenzo iconography. Looks that placed chest rigs over black tailoring or outerwear accelerated your association into hyperspace via X-wing. This collection was Nigo’s most assured and complex for Kenzo to date.