For decades since the early 1900s the world of fashion has been inspired by Oriental trends. The Ballets Russes brought into fashion the taste for the exotic with extraordinary sets and costumes designed by Léon Bakst, Alexandre Benois, Michel Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. At the beginning of the century, inspired by Oriental fashion, Paul Poiret created the “kimono coat”, a square kimono made of a black woollen cloth and trimmed with black satin. Throughout the decades many designers were inspired by the Japanese traditions: Callot Soeurs’ wrap dresses echoed the kimono-style; Mariano Fortuny had kimono patterns stencilled onto his gowns; Madeleine Vionnet applied the geometric idea of the kimono to the structural aspect of her clothes. Issey Miyake, Kenzo and Yohji Yamamoto represent a second wave of designers influenced by Orientalist trends, also popular in Italy during the Fall-Winter 1981/82 when the Los Angeles Times talked about “spaghetti shogunate” while reviewing the Milan catwalks by Armani, Krizia, Versace and Gianfranco Ferrè.
But so far the Orientalist fashion trend hadn’t yet met and clashed with the most advanced future. Well, it hadn’t happened till yesterday when Basso & Brooke launched their Spring/Summer 09 collection during London Fashion Week. It was only a couple of months ago that Bruno Basso & Christopher Brooke presented their “Eight Seasons” retrospective at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Berlin, charming everyone with their chaotic mix and swirls of colours and digital prints. Yesterday the design duo was ready to amaze again the fashionistas and the press with their Spring/Summer collection in which they eclectically fused Japanese traditions and prints with futuristic themes.
Behind a fashion collection there is often a story. If this is true, Basso & Brooke’s tale for next Spring starts in Japan and involves a confident, strong and optimistic woman, who oozes glamour, style and mystery, and lives between two different periods of time, the Heian Era and a sci-fi-like future. In Japanese history, the Heian period is considered as the "Golden Age" of the country’s culture, a time when art thrived and some of the most beautiful costumes were produced.
The most popular style worn by women then was the multi-layered juni-hito, meaning "twelve layers". The coloured layers hinted to different meanings, from natural elements to the seasons and even virtues. The colours of the robes were also important: reds, scarlets, greens or pinks were for example indicative of Spring, darker nuances such as maroon were used during Autumn. When the differently coloured robes were layered one on top of the other they created wonderful and visually striking games of contrasts.
Now imagine flattening up the different layers of the juni-hito style into one dress, mixing the colours and prints of the various robes and reinterpreting them in a modern way and you will get an idea of what Basso & Brooke’s S/S 09 collection is about. The light silk of the dresses, tops and trousers was used as a canvas on which colours, geometric patterns, prints of flowers, birds, animals, stylised pine trees, waves and seascapes clashed with more modern motifs. Fabric flowed from the shoulders and opened into wide kimono-like sleeves, while the intricate knot of the obi – the sash generally made of fine yards of fabric that ties at the back and holds together the kimono – was reduced to a flat obi, a sculpted and post-modernist belt, the perfect accessory for a sensual cyborg out of William Gibson’s novels.
Folding and pleating the fabric added wonderfully intricate and delicate origami-like effects to some dresses, creating poetically futuristic 3D shapes and abstract motifs in colours borrowed from the Heian tradition, but also from urban sunsets on Tokyo. The juxtaposition of traditional and more modern and urban themes was also mirrored by the technology behind the dresses, characterised by digital prints and laser cutting techniques, and in the hairstyles. The latter were more post-punk-meets-Geisha than Heian, and were completed by extravagant huge hairpins by milliner Stephen Jones.
A final mention
goes to footwear designer Raouda Assaf and her sculptural shoes with carved heels that echoed ivory netsuke sculptures.
When Paul Poiret first launched his “kimono coat”, he managed with this design to capture women’s attention, imagination and thirst for everything exotic, erotic and sensual. Basso & Brooke’s subversive prints and devastatingly stylish dresses from their S/S 09 collection will most probably do the same.
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