The Leaning Tower of Pisa featured on Iniye Tokyo James’s invitation for today’s show, which was apt. “The collection’s called Imperfection,” he said backstage. “Life is not perfect. So why should clothes be perfect? It touches on the ups and downs we all go through every day.”
This twist, once known, placed the onlooker in a fun predicament. James said he’d inserted multiple imperfections in his garments and presentation more broadly: So would we spot them? The sunburn makeup was a straightforward starter. The beaded skirt with two skew-whiff beads and the haphazardly stitched seaming on denim, leather, and jersey were so wrong they were clearly right. Uneven hems were purposefully imperfect gems. But what about the right shoe in Look 7: Was its refusal to stay securely afoot an accident designed or spontaneous? And were the minidresses cut so high at the back really meant to show quite so much cheek?
Consistent with his imperfect theme was the fact that 90% of the materials in this collection were, James said, upcycled deadstock from sources in Benin, Nigeria, the UK, and Italy. An unlined black blazer and shorts that transitioned halfway down their lengths into thickly intertwined woven strips had to be prototyped four times, James added, before they were perfected in the factory. The belt they were worn with was decidedly wrong.
