For its 10th womenswear collection—and fifth anniversary—CFCL continued to hone its thesis: knitwear as architecture, as movement, as an ongoing conversation between technology and craft.
Designer Yusuke Takahashi said he found an intellectual thread in the anthropologist Tim Ingold’s Lines: A Brief History, a book that examines culture—ancient and modern music, linguistics, psychology, calligraphy—as a vast fabric of interwoven lines.
Industrial design, notably pieces from the Memphis movement such as Ettore Sottsass’s Mandarin chair, closed the loop, bringing it home to knitwear made from 100% recycled polyester and wool. “Memphis designers also worked by trial and error, so there’s a link there too,” Takahashi offered during a showroom preview.
Inside the show venue—an institute dedicated to acoustic and musical research, located next to the Centre Pompidou—a metronomic soundtrack by artist Miyu Hosoi reprised the mechanical whirr, punch, and hum of computerized knitting looms, plunging guests into the auditory context of the CFCL studio and factory.
Led by a midnight blue blouson with voluminous rounded sleeves framed in red, a series of pieces illustrated a more conceptual approach than we’ve seen in recent seasons. Looks in primary colors will pop as nicely on small screens as they did from the front row; among them were a red-and-black accordion-pleated top, widened by tiers; conical flared numbers in red and pink; and experimental royal blue trousers that mimicked the shape of the traditional ceramics.
But several of the designer’s strongest offerings were more subtle. Reprising in knit the structure of classic cut-and-sewn fabric is one of his major obsessions, and here he delivered magnified herringbone and reinterpretations of his popular peplums, bell shapes, and tailored trousers. Those will fit right in to a contemporary lifestyle that sits somewhere south of formal suiting but still many latitudes north of athleisure.
Also compelling were some new propositions for evening. For theatrical dressers, fine metallic gold stripes streaked across a white structured knit dress; those were inspired by celestial navigation, Takahashi explained. Hewing to a quieter opulence, ribbed tube knits made from black monofilament and metallic gold yarn were worked as a striking column dress or layerable top.
Strong as it was, the collection was only the tip of the iceberg. Later this month, CFCL will mark its five-year milestone with a gallery exhibition in a space just adjacent to its Omotesando flagship in Tokyo. There, Takahashi will be able to show the full scope of his craft, spanning graduate work and artwork from his home in addition to clothes. As world-building goes, it promises to be a pretty impressive exercise.
