Every season has its muses, women who represent the values—and aesthetics—that suggest ways of being in the world. Sade and Patti Smith—heroines cut from very different cloth—were names put forward as beacons for spring 2021 by Sacai’s Chitose Abe and Undercover’s Jun Takahashi, respectively.
Smith is a recurring character in Takahashi’s fantastical world, where real life and fantasy are always intersecting (as they do again for spring in a collection in which Pablo Picasso rubs shoulders with Hello Kitty). The designer has referenced Smith’s personal style, her tattoos, and printed her poetic lyrics on pieces in the past.
It’s not difficult to grasp the appeal of Smith, a pioneer of punk, to Takahashi, a punk musician himself, but that didn’t seem to be what the designer was drawing on this season. The designer had his Smith stand-in photographed on a bloom-strewn ground, and once in a flower crown, in casual layers that pulled from androgyny, festival girl, and #WFH styles.
The Undercover designer was one of many who played with the boho theme this season. The hippie ethos is much deeper than the Summer of Love; it’s also about peace and protest, and the dream of making a better world, all issues that are au courant.
Chitose Abe describes Sade (Helen Folasade Adu) as a symbol of “feminine strength.” Unlike Smith, who is raw and revealing in her look and her words, Sade is truly “a smooth operator,” who protects her privacy behind the sophisticated veneer of her faultlessly minimal style. Of Nigerian and British heritage, Sade grew up on a steady diet of American soul music, and landed on the charts with a jazzy and sultry pop sound that defied easy categorization.
As popular as she is with designers, Sade is someone who value substance over style: “I only make records when I feel I have something to say,” she’s stated. And she’s always been prepared to stand up for what’s right. “I’ve got a conscience. I’ve been brought up to be concerned not only about what affects me immediately. The oppression of any people is important to me,” she said in a 1988 interview. Spoken like a true soldier of love.
