Wim Wenders

Jun Takahashi presented an immensely beautiful and important collection. The Undercover designer explained he was thinking about everyday life – the preciousness of the commonplace and the value of ritual. “Perfect Days“, a new film from Wim Wenders (highly recommend watching it on a day when nothing seems to make sense!) about a Tokyo toilet cleaner named Hirayama who’s remarkably sanguine about life – finding beauty in his books, the tapes he plays on his commute, and the photos he takes of trees in parks – was a creative stimulus for Takahashi. So moved by the film, he asked Wenders to write and read a poem for his soundtrack about a woman not unlike Hirayama in her approach to life. “Watching a Working Woman” illustrates a picture of a single mother, 40-years-old, with a job in a law firm, and a young son she likes to go to the movies with. After she puts him to bed, she writes letters and reads books. What made it so resonant and affecting was its relatability; this wasn’t a fashion designer concocting some “real“, yet absolutely fantasy woman, with an improbable wardrobe to match, but rather someone actually… real. The show opened with what looked like a white tank top and a pair of jeans; in fact, it was a jumpsuit with ribbed knit spliced into the pants’ side seams that matched the sweater the model carried in her hand. To follow, there were many more reworkings of “everyday” garments – like a cardigan, a gray marl sweatshirt, and more formal tailoring – to which he bonded swatches of excess fabric (wispy chiffon, metallic tinsel, a shaggy mohair), rendering them anything but ordinary or prosaic. Pure poetry. Make sure to take a look at the bags, made in collaboration with Brigitte Tanaka: haute-crafted grocery shoppers and yoga-friendly totes. Obsessed.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Yohji Yamamoto is designer with an endless fascination for artists – the individualism, the impulses, and the archetypes. From the loosely knotted poets’ blouse and a coat with peaked shoulders, to the sumptuous attire in velvet and brocade, this was a collection for that certain “genius working in the studio” person. Uniform of loose jackets and utility vests; shirts covered in vivid brushwork tucked into suspendered trousers. Dressed in these ensembles were some of his longtime artist collaborators – Wim Wenders and Max Vadukul – along with Warren Ellis, Norman Reedus, and the dancer Brandon Miel Masele. And while they appeared like distinctive personages, they also conjured some essence of the designer himself. For one of his two strolls down the runway, Vadakul donned a coat with “old bohemian” along the back. Would men consider this a badge of pride, a way of confronting reality with a smirk? “We’re older but that’s the only thing that changes,” the photographer acknowledged backstage. “What we create is still the same.” The show closed with Wenders in trousers printed with his name. Yamamoto and the filmmaker worked together in 1989 when the director made Notebook, a documentary about cities and clothes. Yamamoto noted how they were both children born in the aftermath of war-torn cities and have alchemized that darkness into work that has a poetic resonance. If the collection unleashed ideas with a sort of feisty enthusiasm, the pace was calm, and the mood was poignant.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Design & Culture by Ed

Everyday Rituals. Undercover AW24

Men’s – In The Artist’s Studio. Yohji Yamamoto AW24