“I had an image of this woman in my mind,” Keisuke Yoshida said on a chilly November afternoon as he explained his new collection in a Tokyo showroom. “In my head she’s wearing an outfit, and I can’t tell if it’s a wedding dress or a mourning dress. But somehow I know she is like a mother. Last season, Yoshida’s imaginary mother muse had been a stern, teacher-like figure with cloth clamped tightly around her throat, but this time she has broken free.
Yoshida had accomplished her transformation through feminine basics, using ivory silk blouses and soft, dusty pink tailoring that exposed the chest, while lapels and collars were inverted or twisted so that they stuck up in awkward directions, as if facing a certain direction. were attracted. hast.
Old wedding dresses Yoshida found in Tokyo were reworked into one-off corsets, lace gloves and trousers, so that embellishments of pearls and sparkling lace glittered over the hands or flew over the thighs, while broken ceramics served as earrings alongside seductive secretary glasses. Best of all was a pencil skirt that would be office-appropriate, with a silk camisole sticking out of it, the straps dangling upside down at the ankles. Like more than a few collections this season, it was totally perverse, and all the more charming for it.
Those theatrically spiky stilettos and wide-brimmed hats could very well have brought to mind Irving Penn, or old photos of 1950s Parisian couture, but what makes Yoshida’s work feel good right now are the strange quirks he sprinkles in to to humanize everything and compensate for all the old things. -world glamor or preconceived ideas about feminine mystique to create something delicately twisted, like those deliberately messy collars. Maybe it was really about finding some softness and comfort in the chaos. That’s something we can all strive for.
