Mitsuru Nishizaki is feeling the heat. For the second season in a row, he explained that rising temperatures in Japan had been the starting point. This played well with the layered, deconstructed tailoring he excels at, with roomy jackets in menswear fabrics sliced open at the sides and shirt dresses given airy holes highlighting the hips, for instance.
The Ujoh designer brainstormed over vintage resort poster illustrations, borrowing sailor collars and reinterpreting them in a range of variants, from a V-shaped buttoned cape to fishing net-like mesh knits thrown over the shoulders. Collar details punctuated the waist of pants or the bust of strappy sundresses, and baseball caps with wide scarfs at the back were styled with several of the looks on the runway.
Rope-like fringing dangled, as a skirt worn over tailored pants or a pinafore dress that topped a shirt and pants in a gauzy fabric embroidered with foliage, all done tone on tone, highlighting the textural play and lending movement to the silhouette.
Nishizaki pushed his technical skills with patternmaking to new limits, making hybrids between pants and skirts (a pantleg on one side, a skirt on the other) look effortless.
The designer’s collaboration with Reebok, in its second season, resulted in lightweight patchwork interpretations of Nishizaki’s signature silhouettes in a crinkled technical fabric.
While resortwear may have provided inspiration for the collection, this was a resolutely urban wardrobe of relaxed yet innovative silhouettes.
