Clothes live through being worn. When we wear them, they move with us. They warm up as they sit against our bodies. Eventually, just like people, clothes begin to show signs of wear. And ultimately, also just like people, they wear out.
Anrealage’s Kunihiko Morinaga specializes in using technology to create clothes with innovative and often mesmerizingly unprecedented attributes. Speaking before this afternoon’s show, it sounded as if he was about to go full Frankenstein: “We tried to give life into the clothing, like the clothes are a creature, moving and breathing.” Morinaga might surf the vanguard of technology, but even he is not yet able to impart consciousness into clothing, or to create a dress with sense. What he did demonstrate today, however, was two interesting approaches for making clothes lifelike.
The first approach was literal and driven by technology. Today’s Anrealage collection featured a great many skirts, dresses and coats with undulating, curved, semi-rigid hems. There were also a few looks near the end that were shrouded with curtain like capelets of ruffled pattern gauze. Inserted into these ruffled hems and across the top of these curtain-y capelets were wires which, as Morinaga explained via translator backstage, were set up to move of their own accord. This wasn’t immediately visible when most of the models wearing wired looks strode out onto the runway because, as trailed at the top, human movement creates movement in clothing. This is why the models tended to pause as they walked up towards the photographers. When they stopped moving, their garments didn’t: hems twitched and shivered up and down and back and forth.
Things became even more Jim Henson via a series of handbags Anrealage had developed with a robotics startup named Yukai Engineering. The bags were covered in (fake) fur, and featured a (fake) tail attached to one side. Backstage as Morinaga spoke, I watched a model cradle a bag and distractedly stroke its side: as she did the tail flexed up into the air, mimicking the behavior of a gratified cat. Slightly disappointingly most of the bags seemed to get performance anxiety when out on the runway: despite assiduous stroking, the tails stayed down. The vibrant and varied patterns featured in this collection were the product of Morinaga’s second and much more metaphysical approach to injecting life into his clothing. The patterns were created by 18 artists with different forms of disability and neurodivergence who work with Heralbony, a Japanese-French creative enterprise that helps develop their work into art, clothing and music. This was also reflected in the soundtrack, which like last season’s was produced by Daft Punk cofounder Thomas Bangalter: It incorporated the swoosh of felt tip on paper and the rattle of ball bearing in spray can.
Morinaga suggested that the participation of these artists, many of whom were at the show today, lent the collection something much more fundamental than decoration. He said: “When I visited them I realized that their art is a crystallization of their lives.” It was this essence that the designer was attempting to transpose across to this collection’s clothes.
