Keisuke Yoshida held his fall show on the campus of Rikkyo University, a private Christian institution where the designer attended school as a child. For sixteen bittersweet years, Yoshida, now 33, shuffled around this place, and tonight the memories of that lost boy came back to haunt him again. The runway was along the long path leading from the gate to the school cafeteria, and the dim sky filled with the sound of pipe organs as we waited for the show to begin.
From the start, the collection was intoxicated with the fumes of academia. Starting with perfectly pressed school uniforms and ties, it moved to masterful tailoring, delicate silk blouses and mommy-like floral dresses. A Boy Scout uniform was made of waxed cotton randoseru backpacks (the square ones worn by Japanese schoolchildren) were transformed into leather handbags suitable for adults. Buttoned-up trench coats and satiny shirts cinched high at the neck, while cassock-like dresses complete with dog collars covered the body, or were slightly unbuttoned from the bottom to allow flashes of legs and pointy heels to peek out. At a glance, the minister’s garb appeared in a black leather jacket, fitted to the body and hidden in a tight leather pencil skirt. Long leather straps trailed across the floor like threats of punishment. There were bright red flames and a deep purple color that symbolized the Rikkyo Academy, a color that “had been burning in Yoshida’s eyes since childhood,” according to the show notes.
The idea of exhibiting at his alma mater had been on Yoshida’s mind for some time. “I have recurring dreams about once a month: nightmares where I keep missing school, and they bring me back here,” he said after the show. “Then I wake up and realize I’m an adult and I’m relieved, but there’s also this strange feeling that I can’t quite shake.” It was the ineffable texture of this feeling that he had explored, and something had changed within him as a result: “I felt like I was more in touch with my core this season,” he said.
A sense of forbidden eroticism, the elegance of adults in the eyes of a child, the slow violence of spent youth – he explained it all with a disarming emotional depth and managed to transform these difficult feelings into wonderfully dignified clothes. The road ahead is long, but Yoshida’s inner child can rest easy tonight: he came through this season with full marks.
