Daisuke Obana doesn’t generally give titles to his N.Hoolywood Test Product Exchange Service collections, but in an email exchange, he said if he had to name this one he might go with Rescue Operations. This helps frame the look-book narrative in which the models are imagined handling relief supplies dropped from a helicopter. On a philosophical level, N.Hoolywood TPES is its own rescue operation, as it is based on vintage military gear from the designer’s collection, and the pieces retain details, and sometimes the functionality, of the originals.
For fall, Obana and team directed most of their attention to the Swedish navy kit, honing in on things like “the strap designed to enhance neck warmth,” per Obana, and a webbing belt attached to the facing of a jacket that keeps it closed. Overpants have zips that open to reveal ventilating mesh insets. Intended to represent the natural landscape of cold climates, the palette is drab: slate blue, rock gray, earthy brown, khaki, and black. Though they don’t have the distinctive print, these pieces function to camouflage the wearer. At first glance the most unique feature of some of them is the label patch.
That get-on-with-it anonymity is part of the brilliance of N.Hoolywood. The clothes might have an IYKYK cachet for cognoscenti, but any snobbism is outweighed by attention to detail and utility (which is rarer than you might think in fashion). Only the wearer will know, for example, that, according to Obana, the team “used the latest and unique polyester as much as possible to prevent static electricity caused by friction between different materials.” At N.Hoolywood stealth is as good as wealth.
