Fumito Ganryu. Men's Spring 2021 - Paris

(Images:  Fumito Ganryu.  All credit) 

The 2020 digital fashion week has passed as a first in history for fashion shows, that offered an exclusive online viewing experience, replacing the traditional runway.  Of course, it showed a reduced collection of styles, that were devised while in lockdown and quarantine, with 2021 ensembles more or less flat in their presentations.  Which offered a snapshot of an industry, that has not adjusted too well under the spectra of this pandemic.  It would also indicate that globally, the economy is in worst shape than it was prior to Covid-19 wreaking havoc on everything, as companies struggle to set profit margins for the coming months.  Still, there has been some standouts, with designers skillfully playing with the idea on what isolation means and in lieu of a world, once it emerges from the pandemic, that will not be the same. Global viral outbreaks have a tendency to restructure culture, economics and society. 

Japanese designer Fumito Ganryu, an alumnus of Comme des Garçons, first appeared on the Paris runway in 2018 for his debut Spring menswear collection.  Has struggled to define his styles, seen mostly as clean modernist takes on street wear looks, the collections fail to reveal a defined characteristic from the young designer.  In light of the recent lockdowns, the real test will be a do or die process, in establishing a distinction within a brand name. For Ganyru, he has tried to rise to the occasion,with an attempt at maturing his 2021 styles, with a very muted array, in its similarity of other designers who have delivered their collections pre and post quarantine.

Set together with a male model, UK stylist Tom Guinness, in an everyday glimpse of his house duties as a father and presumably husband, which gives a more realistic impression of what style means inside the quarantine process.  The social interactions that we once knew will change and that adjustment, in all the variants, just might herald in more leaner disregard to feigned exuberance.  Does it mean that style goes out the window?  And who do we dress for anyway?  I like these reflective moments, in sense the lockdown process allows for that experimentation.  Whatever the answers, the future that lies ahead is, has become even more unknown.  However, Ganryu's idea of establishing a smaller range of lounge wear and easytowear styles aimed at the house husbands, continues with its modernist leanings, holding on to, maybe unconsciously, a representation of 1950s pragmatic consumption.  Which is not exactly groundbreaking it is appeal.  With street wear hooded sweatshirts and youthfulness attached, Ganryu's latests collection plays down, unfortunately, the dynamism of male styles. Borderline itself on the homogeneous and predictable.