There’s no time for SAD in the Auralee universe. Winter might be the gloomiest time of year, but for Ryota Iwai it’s just as charming as all of the other seasons.
“There are plenty of things I like about winter,” said the Tokyo designer. “When you wake up in the morning and step outside, the air is clear and crisp. The daylight hours might be short, but there’s a soft sunlight that’s unique to winter, and a certain beauty in that.” Speaking backstage before his show, which took place in a beige-carpeted hall of the Musée de l’Homme on a suitably drizzly evening, Iwai’s modus operandi for the season was to take the darkness and heaviness of winter and bless it with some of his signature lightness.
He achieved this mostly through the materials, which floated across the runway with the irresistible ease Auralee has made its signature. We opened with an American Gigolo-esque camel trench that, when you looked closer, was actually corduroy, and made with cashmere. Throughout came a series of very clever leather jackets that looked thin and light as nylon, but were given a touch of down padding at the back to puff them out. Iwai is a magician when it comes to his faultless fabrics, which he develops himself, but he is also adept at making silhouettes that push the envelope just enough to feel interesting and right for the moment.
What followed was a seemingly endless study in color and texture: velvety mauve trousers, a shearling suede jacket that looked as soft and smooth as mochi, marled brown and gray wools in deliciously draped silhouettes, translucent silk georgette shirting, minimal MA1 bombers with fluffed-up fur along the zippers, and more of that cashmere corduroy in an electric pair of blue pants. “We wanted to create clothing you’d never imagine in winter,” he said. There will doubtless be many that see this collection and imagine it in their wardrobes, nonetheless.
It all unfolded to a soundtrack of “Autumn Sweater” by Yo La Tengo. And though there was enough color and texture throughout to keep the eyes and phone cameras sated for the most part, the show lost a little momentum towards the end as all of the black appeared.
As Auralee’s star has risen over the past few seasons to become one of the hottest tickets on the men’s schedule, and a cottage industry of equally minimal-but-tasteful brands have popped up around it, there’s also an emerging sentiment that the clothes in this pocket of menswear are simply too unchallenging to push fashion anywhere new.
To his credit, Iwai never planned for the brand to become as monumental as it has; that it has resonated so well is, to him at least, entirely incidental. “I’m never trying to show the brand as bigger than what it is, I just want to create something that’s natural and welcoming,” he said. That humble charm and sensitivity, so deftly translated into clothing, ensures Auralee’s time in the sun will endure for a good while yet.
