Planet Tsumori Chisato must be an interesting place to live. Actually, scratch that: The people who live on Planet Tsumori must think that Earth is pretty madcap, based on the dispatches Chisato sends back in each of her collections. Last season, she wrote a memo from the Alps; this time out, her brethren received some hallucinatory reflections on the desert Southwest, replete with O Keeffe skulls and stargazing.
This was an eclectic collection, to put it mildly. But there were a few key themes, in particular a green print of mountain peaks that Chisato abstracted into jagged ruffles and an intarsia pattern on her ultra-fine, Missoni-esque knits. Elsewhere in the collection, Chisato s gaze lifted beyond the horizon and took on the desert s endless sky: She introduced a childlike print of moons and stars, and sunset panoramas that she abstracted, again, into bold tie-dyes. Other motifs included painted portraits of the sunset watcher/stargazer herself, framed by piping, and an image of an antelope skull with a rose in its mouth. The latter was definitely odd and the kind of thing liable to put off visitors to Chisato s world. But there s a method to her seeming madness, and if you looked closely, this collection was well stocked with grounded, wearable pieces. Chisato s fine intarsia knits, for instance, were terribly chic. And the denizens of Planet Tsumori will have a lot of love for a sequined cocktail dress emblazoned with the image of a rearing white horse. Earth: It s magical, isn t it?
