From the Chiasmus archive: "JULIUS. Spring/Summer 2022." Posted on October 15th, 2021 by CHIASMUS MAGAZINE BLOG
(Images: JULUIS 2021)
The last runway show for Tatsuro Horikawa at his brand JULIUS was at Paris Fashion Week in June 2017 for his Spring Summer 2018 collection, since then Horikawa has mostly resigned his collections to lookbooks. Starting his label JULIUS in 2001 a year before one of the most recognizable independent avant-garde designers, Rick Owens, held his first runway show in 2002 at New York Fashion Week. Thus, was the setting down and the beginning of early 2000s avant-garde in a renewed reflection and homage to Yohji Yamamoto, Junya Watanabe and Rei Kawakubo experimental imprint on the designer fashion world Twenty years prior. It is probably, in light of this revamped version of 21st Century avant-garde, that the term 'Dystopic Wares' would be more appropriate in describing the modernism infused concepts of architectural inspired styles, rather than Avant-garde. Yet, this 1900's phrase is more akin to art manifestos of the period and its prelude to postmodernist aesthetics than is to fashion, it does, however roll of the tongue with finesse.
With semantics aside, there is no doubt that Horikawa has ensured that his carrying the Japanese roots of the avant-garde are firmly represented through his own perspective of volume, layering and intricate detailing of his styles. Offering limited and exclusive artisan pieces, morphing from his interest in techno and graphic design in 1990's, was William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk novel “Necromancer” which had a profound impact on the Japanese designer, stating in an interview in 2017 that it is his “bible”, with influences drawn from Japanese aesthetics of the broken Utopia, in its architecture of a retrofitted dystopia, that originates from the Japanese architectural study of the “Burnt Ash School” of a destroyed Japan post World War 2, that later morphed into the Metabolism movement, to which Horikawa had also credited Japanese manga artist Katsuhiro Otomo as also a defining impression on his brand. Best known for the 1982 comic Akira and his recreation of Tokyo into Neo-Tokyo that is of a post World War Three world, hence the crafting of Horikawa’s visual medium within his brand JULIUS, describing its take on the brands looks, “They match a certain feeling I get from being in the city. The best way to describe it would be that it’s like a pop feeling. I only really feel that in Tokyo and in Hong Kong…Living here, it has a bit of a science fiction feeling, and that definitely influences me.”
Horikawa’s Spring Summer 2022 collection titled Obscure comes after his renamed 2021 Mamuthones styles, sourcing the the Sardinian Pagan festival of the same name, to which the JULIUS S/S 2021 lookbook notes further elaborates, “…But as we experience an unprecedented catastrophe, everything is changed. Even the individual must rethink its position and develop a whole new organic bond with the world. However, there is a chance for many people to become awakened by this disaster. A society driven insane by consumerism is about to freeze and be reborn into an organic form.” The ritualized and stylized print work and oversized styles of 2021 have been toned down and reworked for the newer 2022 Obscure collection, within a more crafted modernist pose rather than the drapy ensemble of previous collections, it does feel more crafted and less rugged than previous lookbooks, yet some of the rawer elements are evident throughout. But it certainly has a refined perspective, noting materials such as Horikawa’s use of heavier Japanese cottons, linen and fine wools, layered with parachute silk/nylon, seen on shorts and pants. Horikawa’s Punk au courant that evolved from his Fall 2018 collection, which was inspired by early 1980s American hardcore punk, can also be seen within his latest collection as hanging belts and straps.
After two decades in maintaining his take on the avant-garde while representing the artisan and limited styles that independent designers can only offer, Horikawa has shown that the glitz of the Parisian runway, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, may end up only being in reach of the conglomerates. So, let it be the artisan, who, with his and her continued practice, will rise in 2022 from our broken Utopia, in embracing this retrofitted Dystopia.
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