At the start of Chika Kisada’s fall 24 show, a trio of young ballerinas came giggling down a flight of stairs and sat on the wooden floor, tying up their pumps and stretching out into the splits, before a bell rang and they disappeared upstairs again.
The performance was intended to show a memory Kisada had of being a ballerina herself, and the venue—a small studio in Aoyama—reminded her of the place she first learned to dance. “I wanted to convey that the whole show was a place where the memories in my head appeared, so I started from my own childhood,” she said after the show.
Kisada’s work consistently touches on ballet, and serves as an attempt to ground the ethereal beauty of the dance form in real-world clothing. Her theme this season was “desert flowers”—things that bloom despite arid conditions—but it offered little in the way of surprises. Knitted leotards were enlivened with tulle, a zip-up jersey top descended into a dress, and tulle-covered bum bags made in collaboration with Eastpak were worn as accessories. The floral prints drifted in an old-fashioned direction, and the sparkling boots—though a different kind of dancing shoes—felt ungainly, taking away the lightness from some of the looks.
Chika Kisada’s tailoring is consistently a strong point, however, with clean silhouettes full of poise and elegance, and it’s here that her ballet inspiration shines best, perhaps because it comes from within the clothes themselves rather than as adornment. “I incorporate silhouettes that elongate the spine, and the basic poses dancers make into the patterns,” she said. It means her jackets literally make you stand up straight. To that: brava.
