In yesterday's post we looked at deconstruction as a technique to reinvent a garment, but this is obviously not the only one.
Japanese menswear designer Ichiro Suzuki, a graduate of the Royal College Of Art, has developed, for example, throughout the years a variety of fascinating techniques to create innovative pieces.
Based in Paris and trained in the art of cutting in Savile Row, Suzuki moves from British bespoke tailoring to subvert and reinvent menswear design.
Suzuki could be defined as a cutter rather than a tailor: this was already clear from his first collections that were inspired by Op Art and in which he created three-dimensional cube geometries on jackets and suits.
In his earlier creations, pinstripes were also twisted, as if they were derailed by an invisible force or disturbance (the designer was fascinated by the power of stripes after reading the book "The Devil's Cloth" by Michel Pastoureau), while tartan was transformed through geometry into a kaleidoscopical pattern.
As the years passed, Suzuki tried to come up with hybrids, combining formal jackets with trench coats or biker's jackets. The main aim of these experiments was presenting a constant revisitation of the staples of men's wardrobe.
In his most recent collection, inspired by Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte, rather than cutting and recombining two garments together, Suzuki created a very unusual effect.
Looking at his designs combining the Burberry check and a classic coat, a biker jacket and a trench coat or a cable knit jumper and a jacket, you get the impression the designer managed to create the sort of magic that you see only in animated cartoons.
It is indeed as if he had melted one garment or accessory like a tartan scarf, poured it into a bucket and then threw the contents of the bucket onto another garment, letting colours and patterns drip down the fabric underneath, creating in this way a rather unusual effect, a sort of garment painted onto another one that was used as a canvas.
In this collection Suzuki tried to come up with juxtapositions and contrasts not just between two different garments (or one garment and one accessory...), but between the handcrafted and the industrial as well, proving that, it may be difficult to innovate classic menswear, but it is definitely not impossible. The secret is in mastering tailoring and cutting skills and combining them with modern techniques.
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