It’s only natural that time should be a preoccupation of N.Hoolywood’s Daisuke Obana, as he was a vintage dealer before becoming a designer, and he often references the past, though not in a dusty way. During this monumental year, the designer, who recently turned 50, will soon mark his brand’s 25th anniversary. There will be a book released next month and an exhibition at the PARCO Museum in Tokyo.
For his spring 2025 Compile collection Obana chose an outdoor sculptural installation, Mirai Shin no Oka (The Hill of the Future Heart) at Setoda Kosanji Museum, for the location of his lookbook shoot. The sculptor, Itto Kuetani, built it, Obana wrote, “using an entire small hill located in a Japanese temple.” Kuetani, from Hiroshima, was just three-years-old when the atomic bomb destroyed his home city; that he went on to create art with an airy monumentality is inspiring. Mirai Shin no Oka is constructed of marble, a symbol of permanence from ancient times. Obana included fossil and veiled-marble prints in this line up, and also collaborated with architectural firm Ultra Studio to adapt Scagliola, an artificial marble made from gypsum, per the press release, into textiles. Rock collecting, as it were, is not a passing fancy for Obana who wrote that he has a passion “for collecting marble furniture and objects,” such as a Mario Botta dining table. “Having minerals close at hand in daily life, for me, brings a sense of peace and comfort—similar to the warmth you feel from the life force of organic matter, but instead it’s the passage of time and the tree ring-like patterns in the stone that calm me,” he wrote.
Tame compared to last season’s Fashion Zombies film, the presentation of this collection was not entirely pacific; some of the models looked like they were posing for tourist pictures, others, with shimmering mineral dust on their skin, could have just arrived from another galaxy. It wasn’t really clear, and that’s exactly how Obana likes things when it comes to his designs. What looks simply ordinary is not so when experienced, because of fabrics, construction and fit. This season, the designer wrote, “I believe I’ve been able to create a new kind of comfort by combining the lightness and breathability of modern materials with the grayish tones inspired by inorganic minerals, expressed in a slightly more minimal form than usual, using traditional materials like linen.”
Those minimal looks included lapel-less jackets, wrap tops and robe coats. Obana, noting that his early work is now sold as vintage, said he looked back and made references to 2009, both his own work and what was happening elsewhere as he developed “a neo-postmodern style for today, where forms are sculpted in solid, non-detailed garments, expressed through shape and cutting.” Simple gestures can be powerful; a string belt tied into a floppy bow underlined the soft fullness of a gray-washed jeans; placed above a belted waistline it dissected the silhouette in an unexpected way, as did the T-shirt extending below the waist from under a bolero-length windbreaker. Other looks, like the opening suit, had a kind of futuristic aspect. Plaids with a dash of neon were eye candy, but, wrote Obana,“perhaps it’s the solid items that most capture the essence of this season.” He was referring to tonality, yet this season, it’s the collections that seem connected to earth and reality that project a feeling of rock-solid relevance.