Daisuka Obana. Spring 2021 RTW - New York

                (Images: Daisuka Obana.  All credit) 

Daisuka Obana, is one of the many Japanese designers showing at this year's digital version of Spring 2021 New York Fashion Week, yet he is no newcomer to the fashion world, earning his place as one of Japan's unique contemporary designers of the last three decades, with his brand N.Hoolwood.  It is the lost-in-translation play on Western dialect, that has always been an endearing creative trait of the Japanese interpretation, to which Obana has been a keen observer.  Inspired by elements of American expectationalism and its myths.  Reworking styles under his own Japanese setting, he has been known to have drawn influences from Amish communities, though to popular culture icons via Hollywood, American literature and the expanse of rural America. 

But for Obana's latest styles, he has evoked the survivalist inspiration of durable and stylish clothing, with mostly a synthetic material base to weather the storm.  Obana, as an inspiration for this collection keenly watched the first commercial rocket launch which successfully sent two American astronauts to the International Space Station.  I wrote an article recently titled Moon race redux and Space internet: All hype or misaligned ambitions?, despite a global pandemic that has floored every country in world and its citizens, a revved up Space Race has also taken place between the Super Powers, with a new emerging power China trying to etch in on the commercialization of space.  One has to be cynical of the overblown ego, particularly this new race to the moon, which is essentially to mine it.  But also to be concerned about the amount of space junk accumulating in the Earth's upper atmospheres.  Yet, with geopolitical tensions building on Earth, the other issue is space security.  Yes, we live in interesting times. 

As a keen collector of vintage designer clothing, Obana has ensured that his Spring 2021 collection is grounded in the now and its uncertain future, with elements of fine tailoring.  It appears that the non-traditional fabrics are being used in earnest, as complete ensembles, seen with UK designer Craig Green's stylizations to be the general benchmark.  As the new avant-garde trend is beginning take hold for 2021, without the use of traditional fabrics, more so the exotic, which in its earlier experimentions, could be in short supply or are becoming phenomenally expensive to obtain.  If supplies or even the deadstock offcuts begin to dwindle, we may see the designers turn towards synthetic materials. 

Utilizing clothing as a metaphor to a changing world, such as Obana's template, it is COVID-19 that is the game changer.  Except, the problem has been so far, that society is stuck between returning back to what we are familiar with, rather than galvanizing a opportunity to work within a pandemic, in some ways developing a newer identity.  This push and pull of politics and its social cues, both psychosocial and sociological is set for a structural breaking point.  This isn't a science fiction story and the script hasn't been written.