Wedged between the Supreme department and the Prada dramatics at Dover Street Market, I once saw a baggy patchwork-dotted smock, a garment as shapeless as it was chic—or maybe it should be the other way around?—with a label that read “Visvim.” This sad girl spoke to me so loudly, with such a strange resonance, that when Hiroki Nakamura, the designer of the Japanese cult brand, who holds legendary status as an arcane interpreter of vintage workwear, had a press day yesterday, I hightailed it immediately to Industria studios.
I never met a faded frock I didn’t like, but in the interest of brevity, of economy, let’s boil it down to my top five infatuations from Visvim’s spring offerings:
1. An indigo-dyed, high-waisted dress with a printed rear patch-pocket, suitable for a chic Dust Bowl refugee, a slender, sexy Ma Joad.
2. The perfect striped tee, short of sleeve and round of neck, the sort of thing a little boy would have worn in the middle of the last century—the young Theodore Cleaver!
3. A tie: Battle of the blouses! A non-cliché Hawaiian shirt perfectly cut and made out of 80 percent shirt and 20 percent real pineapple in a dead heat with a high-necked, ruffly patched button-up—Laura Ingalls Wilder in a dive bar.
4. An overdyed leather flight jacket with exquisite proportions and hand-painted wings on one shoulder, signifying the wearer’s enlistment in an imaginary, terrifyingly stylish, expeditionary force.
5. And last but not least, Nakamura’s own rattletrap 1950s hot rod, occupying pride of place in the front of the studio, complete with running board, its interior stripped to make it go even faster. When the designer starts the explosive engine, every last perfectly frayed thread quivers on the racks.
