The announcement was made last September: Japanese designer, DJ, producer, and entrepreneur Nigo takes the reins of the fashion house Kenzo, a few months after the departure of his predecessor Felipe Oliveira Baptista. Founder of the fashion labels Billionaire Boys Club with Pharrell Williams, Bape and Human Made, this great figure of streetwear in Japan has unveiled his first collection for Kenzo in sixty styles this morning.
In the Galerie Vivienne in Paris, place where Kenzo Takada presented his first show in the French capital in 1970, Nigo seems to walk in the fashion house founder’s shoes as the new artistic director. As expected, colours and motifs abound through myriads floral prints, such as the house’s emblematic Poppy print and floral compositions painted with aquarelle and printed all over matching pieces, but also through thin or tiger-like stripes, revisited tartan or Prince of Wales’ styles, as well as many bright red, green, blue and yellow colours that bring a very spring-like and optimistic spirit to this wardrobe. Regarding designs’ cuts, the Japanese creator is diametrically opposed to streetwear fashion, with his particularly preppy wardrobe defined by numerous shirts and midi shirt dresses, ties, three-piece suits with large and fitted pants, but also with berets as an inkling to foreigners’ stereotyped vision of Parisians. Nonetheless, Nigo has slightly shaken up these conformist outfits with the recurring use of Japanese denim, the association of teddys and other colored knitted sweaters, straight dresses and pants, or the creation of two-tone jackets characterised by strong and contrasting vivid colours. The whole offers an eccentric touch to the Japanese fashion house.
