Anti-Couture Grows Up: Kenzo’s 40th Anniversary on Vogue Russia (and Marras' appeal to David Lynch...)

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Russian speakers who follow Irenebrination will find in the September 2010 issue of Vogue Russia my feature on Kenzo’s 40th anniversary that includes an interview with creative director Antonio Marras.

Born in 1939 in a large family, Kenzo Takada first developed an interest in fashion while reading his sisters’ magazines.

He became one of the first students to enrol at Tokyo’s Bunka Fashion College and moved to Paris in 1964, opening in 1970 his first boutique, Jungle Jap.

At the time Takada was already planting the seeds of a fashion revolution: all the pejorative connotations surrounding the “Jap” term were transformed in this name into ironic references to a positive identity.

Soon after, Takada launched his own maison with a precise message in mind: offering women a fresh approach to fashion and the chance to mix different patterns and materials, creating a very peculiar style that mixed Japanese inspirations with Parisian influences.

“Kenzo always represented the ‘anti-couture’, a sort of absolute freedom in combining different garments and creating through them a very peculiar fashion language that allows you to reach out to other people and communicate with them,” Marras told me.

Throughout the years Kenzo confirmed his position as the most Western and the most Parisian of the Japanese designers showcasing in France.

Blending different cultures and identities – from Scandinavian sweaters to Mexican rebozos, Native American designs, Egyptian patterns, African styles, Tyrolean costumes and Bolivian attires – he traced a new geography that didn’t seem to have any boundaries.

As the years passed, the house of Kenzo launched its first menswear collection and fragrances and, in 1999, Takada decided to retire.

Antonio Marras debuted as Creative Director in the Autumn 2004 season. “I never thought I would have ended up directing Kenzo’s maison,” Marras revealed, “it was like a utopian dream that I never thought would turn true.”

Marras stepped into Kenzo’s universe first by visiting its archives. “Some people are bookworms, but I’m a total ‘archive-worm’: every time I see an archive I fall into a sort of trance and forget about time and space,” he joked.

While studying the archive Marras discovered he had some analogies with Kenzo, first and foremost a passion for patchwork designs and mixing fabrics.

“As a child, entering in my father’s fabric shop represented for me an ecstatic and joyful experience. Fabrics became an important part in my life: I love their colours, prints, patterns and smell and I still keep some of the fabrics my father left as they bring me back in time.”

The designer then began an invigorating process, injecting new energies into the fashion house. “I tried to respect the maison’s genetic code, re-interpreting some pieces and styles, transferring my own cultural experiences into it.”

It was then that he realised he shared something else with Takada: they both come from an island.

Sardinia and Japan are very different for cultural traditions, history and geographic collocations, yet it’s exactly this difference that allowed the Alghero-born designer to find new affinities with Kenzo. “I’ve always been attracted by dichotomies and by Japanese culture and calligraphy. One of my favourite garments is actually the kimono because in its geometrical simplicity, it’s strikingly different from Sardinian costumes.”

During our chat Marras also mentioned his connection with art, theatre and cinema.

Kenzo's Autumn/Winter 2010-11 collection mixes indeed a chromatic palette from Eastern European countries with the style of icons à la Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris, interestingly enough, when I asked Marras which director he would like to work with he surprisingly mentioned David Lynch.

“Wouldn’t it be great to see Kenzo’s story in Twin Peaks-style?" he asked me, "I would love to see how a visionary director like Lynch would revolutionise Kenzo’s own vision. But I would also like to see what an Italian such as Matteo Garrone (director of Gomorrah) may come up with if he had to tell Kenzo’s story.”