Coronavirus is constantly on our minds: the news are currently dominated by President Donald Trump who last week tested positive for COVID-19 with his wife, but it was just announced that Japanese designer Kenzo Takada died from complications related to Coronavirus. News were confirmed by K3, the luxury homeware and lifestyle brand he launched last January with Jonathan Bouchet Manheim, Engelbert Honorat and Wanda Jelmini.
Born in 1939 in Himeji, Japan, into a large family, Takada first developed an interest in fashion while reading his sisters' magazines. He became one of the first male students to enrol at Tokyo's Bunka Fashion College and moved to Paris in 1964, opening in 1970 his first boutique, Jungle Jap in Galerie Vivienne in Paris (his first fashion show took place here in April 1970), a space he decorated with a replica of Henri Rousseau's painting "Le Douanier" that also inspired the name of the shop.
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 (1976) 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," Antonio Marras, Kenzo's Creative Director from 2003 (he debuted in the Autumn 2004 season) to 2011 stated in an interview in 2010 for the 40th anniversary of the maison.
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, creating a new and transnational mythology.
At the end of the '70s, Kenzo's catwalks turned into epiphanies celebrating his flamboyant personality and multicultural identity: held under a circus tent, one show climaxed with horsewomen performers and with the designer on an elephant.
As the years passed, the house of Kenzo launched its first menswear collection (his men's line, launched in 1983, became Kenzo Homme in 1987) and fragrances (the fragrance business was established in 1967 and worked separately from the fashion company).
In 1993 Kenzo's businesses (Mode and Parfums) were acquired by the LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) group for $80.5 million. The designer celebrated his 30-year career with a retrospective and his final collection. In 1999, Takada decided indeed to retire, even though he continued to support the brand in the year that followed.
In 2000 Kenzo was replaced by head designers Gilles Rosier for womenswear and Roy Krejberg for menswear; they were followed three years later by Sardinian designer Antonio Marras.
Marras stepped into Kenzo's universe first by visiting its archives: while studying them the Italian designer discovered he had some analogies with Kenzo, first and foremost a passion for patchwork designs and mixing fabrics, but also for art and travelling.
Kenzo often took inspiration from Wassily Kandinsky and David Hockney and, in June 2010, he exhibited at the Paris-based Studio 55 a series of self-portraits that showed him wearing kimonos recalling in their colours and nuances some of the most iconic prints from his collections.
Takada the "fashion tourist" called his 1986 menswear collection "Around the World in Eighty Days", but this constant sense of movement and transformation also characterised Kenzo's womenswear collections.
Carol Lim and Humberto Leon followed Marras and worked as Creative Directors at Kenzo from 2011 to 2019. Kenzo's 40th anniversary was celebrated with a book published by Rizzoli New York focusing on the maison's art, history and achievements.
Kenzo's new creative director Felipe Oliveira Baptista presented his first show in February this year. Last Wednesday his S/S 2021 collection for Kenzo, was showcased in Paris, with Baptista presenting a new geography of dress and transational vision for Kenzo's multicultural universe.
Comments