from the chiasmus archive: "Sacai – Resort 2022" Posted on August 20, 2021

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(Images: Sacai. 2021)

The utility outwear trend some what petered out in 2017, only slightly returning in 2018, but unable to hold the ground in lieu of the return of modernist styles and of more recently the dark, gothic and avant-garde looks hitting what is left of the runways post and pre (again?) lockdowns.  Chitose Abe’s stalwart brand Sacai has held he course of her stylized futurist inspired looks ala the urban utility aesthetic, yet she is no overnight sensation. One of the early 2000 avant-garde designers who descended onto the fashion industry, showing her first collection in 2010.  Abe was able to gain a back-door entry into the European fashion world as a pattern cutter via Junya Watanabe’s already established footprint and if you are aware of the history of Japanese fashion designers and their road to Paris, which also paved the way for a many aspiring Japanese  designers thereafter, it was the late 1970s Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawaburo and Junya Watanabe that laid down four decades of the risqué, in all of its tailored Japanese minimalism to both European and American markets.

Still, Abe has truly risen to the challenge of defining her brand Sacai without it being foreshadowed by the legacies that came before her, however the influences are clearly there as are the stylizations to her collections of the last ten years, still, one cannot dismiss the femininity of Abe’s styles, even though it crosses over to the masculine with her use of outerwear and the many collaborations that she has embarked on.   There is a softness and graceful gesture to Abe’s avant-garde looks, whilst also mixed with the brash and at time blunt sex appeal, as noted in viewing her Ready-to-Wear 2022 collection.  With Jean Paul Gaultier having retired from designing clothes, his couture showing for Spring 2021 was in name only with the presentation offered to Abe to be the guest designer which was her debut of Haute Couture.    Not bad, for a designer who says that in mid 1990s she moved to Tokyo with two cardboard boxes of her belongings, to work for the domiciliate Comme des Garçons.

Abe’s acumen of not only an innovative and relentless fashion designer, with 55 collections and a couture showing under her belt, she has also shown to be a shrewd businesswoman, collaborating with the likes of the global sports giant Nike to her recent X collaboration with the German luxury future goth street wear brand ACRONYM, which is apart of  Abe’s Resort 2022 showing.  Keeping in line within her distinction of layering and structuring the styles, her avant-garde inclinations remain intact.   The pandemic is changing humanity, which is what viruses do, our societies won’t be the same after this, even though there were significant locks-down across the globe in 2020 and a asymmetrical vaccine roll-out, the virus is mutating into a more virulent and dominant entity. What is interesting in understanding this changing landscape, while studying these future looks and styles which have, in some cases, prior the pandemic, have utilized apocalyptic settings and dystopian landscapes as a backdrop.  To which Abe’s latest offering holds that paradox of both the hopeful aspects of sellable styles representing a possible glowing 2022 Spring for the Northern Hemisphere and a doomy reflection of reinstated lockdowns across Europe and America, which could see the return of widespread mask mandates, that, or something else could be in the horizon.  Maybe a solar storm hits the Earth and takes out the power grids? 

Such is Abe’s combination of dualities.

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(A.Glass 2021)