James Dean giving his best rebel stare appeared on a T-shirt early in this Sacai collection. It wasn’t just his brooding beauty that turned on Chitose Abe this season. Backstage she said she fell for a quote attributed to the famous actor: “I think the prime reason for existence, for living in this world, is discovery.” Dean’s own path of discovery was cut brutally short when he died in a car accident, on his way to a racing competition, at just 24. Abe’s journey is ongoing. “She’s been doing this job for 25 years now,” her interpreter said backstage, “but she still feels she can do more, she wants to discover more.”
Her zest for remixing was not diminished on the runway, but because the building blocks of the collection were classics of 1950s American style—Dean’s era—it felt more essential and less experimental than her collections sometimes do. Preppy, in its way, but with a Sacai twist. The red Harrington jacket Dean wore so well, in Rebel Without a Cause, for example, was oversized, as were the chinos worn with it, which also featured an inner waistband with the brand logo peeking out above a nylon webbed belt. Other pants were cut with deep slant hip pockets that produced a strong silhouette, pleasingly familiar but refreshed.
Denim came in for a good deal of reinvention. Levi’s jean jackets were nipped, tucked, and pleated into eye-catching shapes for guys, and on the girls’ side they were spliced with jeans to make a denim shirtdress and a denim jumpsuit of extreme proportions. Abe also hooked up with WTAPS, a cult Japanese streetwear brand known for military garb, and had some fun with army uniforms. Architectural shoulders added extra swag to a woman’s field jacket, a motif carried over to leather perfectos and double-breasted checked blazers. Fun was also the name of the game with a racing car print that was spied on Pharrell Williams, a front-row guest.
A few of the models carried a pile of books secured with a strap, the way teenagers of the 1950s did, back when they walked to school uphill. Back when teens actually read books. Abe seemed to be tapping into something universal with this collection. Ivy style, which is another strain of this look, has been trending all season. When the future feels scary, we tend to look to the past, though Abe, who is an optimist by nature, doesn’t necessarily see things that way. When asked why the 1950s now, she said, “I just like James Dean’s freedom.”
