“We are not a brand that tends to over-explain ourselves, so write about what you feel,” said a representative of Kolor’s Junichi Abe backstage. When asked to offer a word to describe his own feelings, and his collection, the designer offered succinctly: “Uniform.”
There was a hilarious irony in the drizzle that started as guests sat around the courtyard of the Lycée Henri-IV, making the majority of the crowd throw on the plastic rain ponchos Abe’s team had left on each seat, effectively uniforming itself. But Abe’s curiosity for uniforms was less driven by homogeneity and more by mere keenness for their aesthetic. “There is no other meaning,” he said with a smile of his appetite for exploring this particular territory this season.
Abe riffed on varsity styles and army jackets, creating handsome reimaginings of British military tunics cut extra wide and with high breaks to offer a playful flatness. He also looked at tactical vests; most charming here were those he made in mesh to layer above below tees and outerwear with their cargo pockets hanging sometimes over and others under, creating a charming sense of depth.
Uniforms provided a common thread to this Kolor lineup, and a solid foundation for Abe to then let his knack for deeply technical reconstructions run freely. He cut boyish creased tailored trousers and layered them under sheer nylon slacks, and collaged some of his blazers with shiny lightweight Lurex sweaters on their backs. This experiment in aerodynamics continued with light nylon skirts that ballooned in the wind and cutesy tulle T-shirts ruffled and gathered here and there for a left-field touch of evening drama.
Today’s winners were by far the crinkly nylon coats and jackets, one styled as a shirt in the opening look and others belted or offered as finishing touches in multi-layered outfits. An overarching story this season has been that of light and airy tailoring, jackets gutted and made forcibly light and breezy. Abe was not immune to this rising trend in menswear, but his iteration was still, as things go down in Kolor land, entirely his own: There was some cheeky humor to the way he added panels of gray nylon basted with diagonal stitches to his lapels, replicating traditional tailoring inner workings. In the same way the guests looked after the show with their rain ponchos worn only around their necks or hanging over an arm or two—the sun started beaming as soon as the first look hit the runway—Abe’s uniforms had nothing monotonous about them. They carried a lived-in sense of individuality.
