Hollywood has its remakes and fashion has its reeditions. Most of the time these revisitings fail to resonate with the same urgency as the originals. Why Luca Guadagnino would dare mess with American Psycho, for example, is a real head scratcher. Remember his Suspiria?
In any case, a remake is what was on Jun Takahashi’s agenda this season. As a way to mark his 35th anniversary in fashion, he decided to return to a personal favorite: his fall 2004 collection, which was inspired by the plush creations of the French artist Anne-Valérie Dupond and the style of Patti Smith. At the time Takahashi asked himself, “what it might be like if Smith wore clothes reminiscent of handcrafted stuffed animals.” As you do.
Smith, as it happens, performed “Because the Night” in Milan over the weekend at a Bottega Veneta party. It would’ve been her 45th wedding anniversary and when her voice cracked, she said, “I think it’s Fred,” her late husband. It was a heartbreaker of a moment. Takahashi downplayed Smith’s role in today’s collection, but her “reappearance” here was one of those serendipities that keeps people coming back to fashion shows year after year.
Reflecting on his 35 years in fashion backstage, Takahashi said, “time flies so quickly. The speed of the business, the speed of the cycle is getting faster, but my creations aren’t changing.” A thorough examination of the 2004 show he was looking at belies that statement, but the gist of it rings true. Takahashi isn’t concerned with trends, and nor is he interested in looksmaxxing. The kind of clothes he makes are more about auramaxxing; they don’t make the woman inside them look sexier or tighter or younger, but you’ll notice her just the same: For the oddball accumulation of pins on a little jacket, and for that little jacket’s curved seams and uneven hems, as if sagging from wear. For the way other jackets looked kintsugi’d with visible thread naively applied, and for the beads, fringe, and talismans that decorated those jackets.
Pointing to the fact that clothes get better with use would seem to put Takahashi at cross purposes with himself, but a collaboration with Champion yielded sweatsuits with a New With Tags feeling, and not only because of the visible tags peeping from seams. The plush toys materialized as puffer jackets sprouting stuffed legs and snouts, giving new meaning to the term teddy bear coat, as well as on a pair of show stopping glossy puffer party dresses.
Those two dresses had a touch of the surreal, but the rest of the collection, even as it crescendoed in a series of beaded and befeathered evening suits with ornate gilded shoes to match, resonated in a real-life way, a quality accentuated by the manner in which the models (many of the age to have been walking at that 2004 show) wandered around the stage, with no set pathway, sometimes nearly bumping into each other, other times pulling up short, as if in deep thought. The show, in turn, produced deep thoughts in the audience, about the bittersweet effects of the passage of time and about which quilted blazer, bead-trimmed pantsuit, or sparkly-hemmed coat they would like to buy.
