In yesterday's post we looked at artists working with the theme of light and creating new and intriguing patterns of colours on canvas. In fashion Anrealage's designer Kunihiko Morinaga has coherently developed in the last few years a series of chapters in the story of his brand focused on the themes of light and shadow. His studies on these topics recently turned into an exhibition that took place in November at Parco Museum in Tokyo.
Entitled "A Light Un Light" the exhibition played on dichotomies – from shadow Vs light to real Vs unreal/imagined. The exhibition opened with Kunihiko Morinaga inviting visitors to ponder about such themes via his Spring/Summer 2015 collection ("Shadow") made with photosensitive fabrics, and his all-black A/W 2015 collection ("Light") that featured garments that, when hit by the light, revealed mesmerising and colourful patterns.
Photosensitive fabrics were also employed by Morinaga for the garments in his S/S 16 collection ("Reflect") with monotone shades and stripes hiding complex neon houndstooth check textures in dresses and trench coats.
The reflection theme was also tackled in the exhibition via garments that reflect themeselves: men's shirts or bomber jackets that multiplied to create monumentally voluminous kaleidoscopic three-dimensional effects and that reveal colourful patterns, geometric prints and textural effects when hit by lights.
The final theme of the exhibition - "Power" - was instead analysed via the photonic-crystal fibers employed in the designs from the S/S 18 collection.
This material allowed Morinaga to transform the theme of kinetic energy into light: when subjected to mechanical strain, the fiber changes indeed colour.
Some of the most conceptual designs on display implicitly asked visitors to consider a further contrast between what's wearable on an everyday basis and what is too unusual to be employed for ordinary occasions.
To prove that the wearable and unusual can be fused together, Morinaga produced a series of clothes and accessories for the Parco Museum shop that looked completely normal, but changed their look when exposed to light variations.
The exhibition was also a collaborative effort: Japanese musician Ichiro Yamaguchi from rock band Sakanaction, known for their fusion of alternative rock, electronic, pop, and new wave styles, worked on the sound that accompanied visitors, while Rhizomatiks focused on the design and the projects involving hardware/software development.
This Japanese design and architecture company has been working on bridging the gap between the creative and the commercial worlds since 2006. The group has collaborated on museum, theatre and fashion events, promoting in the last few years also projects with world class scientists.
In October Rhizomatiks was also involved in creating the images that accompanied the "Kaleidoscope Collection", a capsule project by Anrealage with Asics featuring sneakers incorporating textiles (similar to the ones from the S/S 16 collection) that can change colours, producing geometrical patterns.
While "A Light Un Light" may not have been extremely new for Anrealage's fans familiar with the collections it featured, the event was a good way to recap Morinaga's studies on high-tech fabrics and textiles and maybe wonder where he will take his experiments in the next seasons.
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