At Paris Fashion Week, Kenzo plays a memorable game of denim and dragons
To showcase their second archive-diving La Collection Memento for Kenzo, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon tucked a traditional runway show inside a three-act play performed by Japanese Kagura dancers and based on the legend “Yamata no Orochi,” which, according to Wednesday night’s performance by the Hiroshima Kagura Group, goes something like this.
Act I: “The Eight-Forked Dragon”
A colorful, multi-patterned eight-headed, eight-tailed dragon swirls and coils its way into Paris (“Are they wearing Kenzo?” my seatmate wondered aloud), where it proceeds to devour a young woman — which, according to mythology, it must do on an annual basis.
Act II: “Remembrance of Denim Past”
The dragon lapses into a postprandial slumber, which, as a result of devouring the young woman too fast, includes a long indigestion-related dream involving denim- and riotous-print-clad men and women parading through its eight heads. (OK, we actually made up that particular plot point, but it goes a long way toward explaining the runway show shoehorned into the performance).
Act III: “Susanoo’s Revenge”
Susanoo, the Japanese god of storms, arrives to battle the dragon. After much crouching and crossing of swords, Susanoo methodically hacks off each of the dragon’s eight heads and proudly lines them up as trophies at the front of the stage.
Did we mention there were clothes? The models who looped across the stage and through the audience in Act II were clad in pieces from La Collection Memento No. 2, which took archival inspiration from the 1986 launch of Kenzo Jeans and its focus on pairing Asian style with a quintessentially American fabric. (Last season’s debut La Collection Memento plucked inspiration from the early ’80s.)
That meant lots of dark, indigo denim pieces with kimono-inspired details like flared sleeves and wrap belts. There also was a range of reddish-orange denim described in the show notes as “samurai red.”
The jeans offerings for both men and women were noticeably generous in the leg, and the standout women’s style was seriously high-waisted.
Vintage Kenzo images and prints — the flying tiger logo and bamboo stripes among them — were dusted off and given new life on reversible Hawaiian shirts, dresses, anoraks, high-waisted bikini bathing suits, overalls and a range of rayon button-front shirts guaranteed to take your next Aloha Friday outfit to a whole new level. And Hokusai’s instantly recognizable woodblock print “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” which appeared on pieces in Kenzo Takada’s first Kenzo Jeans show in Paris in 1986 (it also was incorporated into the Kenzo logo at the time), were seen again in La Collection Memento No. 2, popping up on denim kimono dresses, fanny packs and breast pockets of denim jackets.
Although we didn’t spot any actual dragons on the clothes that came down the runway, it’s worth pointing out that the slumbering eight-headed and eventually beheaded dragon at the top of the Kenzo stage marked the second such animal spotted at Paris Fashion Week. The first could be seen breathing fire across a handful of pieces in Dior’s spring and summer 2018 runway collection. A couple more runway sightings and we’ll start to think “Game of Thrones” had something to do with it.
For more musings on all things fashion and style, follow me at @ARTschorn.
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