When I finished making the last collection, I somehow became aware that the next collection would be green. I think it was seeing the countless plants growing out of the sand and the ivy leaves covering abandoned buildings in the sand dunes and port towns we visited for the previous season's shoots that brought to mind the scene of new life sprouting in a devastated world.
So I turned my attention to a Japanese manga/movie about Fukai, a toxic jungle, which begins with a prologue similar to the film referred to in the previous collection. The contrasting relationship between civilization and nature, and the existence of Fukai that has both elements.
In that story, the heroine's search for the meaning of Fukai and the propagation of its truth leads to a kind of mediation between civilization and nature, without obliterating each other, and to the rebirth of a collapsed world.Around autumn last year, when I was in London, my friends took me to Barbican Centre. Cultural facilities such as a cinema and library coexisted with greenhouses and courtyard plants in a rugged brutalist architecture. When this scene suddenly appeared in the middle of the concrete jungle, I felt as if I had found what I was looking for.
I therefore set out to create a collection in which the shapes and textures evoked by artificial and natural objects coexist and intermingle within a single material or look.
Silk mole jacquard fabrics woven in tile-like patterns, moutons that look like old bronze vessels and leathers like frayed armour represent motifs that contrast with the source natural materials.
Solid ventile cotton and three-dimensional knits represent the building shells and the moss that grows on them.
The colour palette of this collection consists mainly of two colours: positive green, which comes from lush vegetation, and negative green, which recalls military uniforms and tanks. To ensure that the two tonal colours with contrasting meanings are in harmony, beige and iridescent colours are used as a subtle colour accent.
The people imagined as wearers are the nomadic people who also appear in the story from which the quotation is taken. I imagined how clothes with traditional roots can be freely combined to suit their lifestyle.
On the western shore of the Sea of Azov, lying between the Ukrainian mainland and the Crimean Peninsula, there are mudflats known as the ‘Syvash’ in Japanese word called ‘Fukai’, around which war is still raging. We can only pray that the world, which is in chaos due to conflicts and disasters, will be at peace as soon as possible.