Harunobu Murata was feeling uncharacteristically anxious after his show this season. Though he blew a kiss to the crowd as he always does at the finale, his usual smile was absent. Had he done enough? “I feel very strange this season, because I’ve tried to do something that’s quite new for me,” he said.
No need to worry: It was his best collection yet. After a few seasons of trying to reach some preconceived notion of so-called elegance, and never quite getting there, this time he changed tack. He’d looked to August Sander’s 1914 photograph, “Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance,” which depicts a trio of working class men standing in a muddy field, all dressed to the nines in hats and suits, and carrying canes, and found in it a convincing glamou—not of some untouchable ideal, but of real life. “I was tired of expressing straight elegance, and I tried to go deeper,” he said.
In practice, this meant that instead of piling on the design flourishes and accessories––apart from a few bags, at least––he pared everything back. The silhouettes were mostly very clean (Murata has design experience at Jil Sander), with muddy brown coats and suits being the standout pieces. He used the same gold disc over and over as an accessory, as a clasp on sumptuous wool suits or on shawls that hugged the shoulders, and dangled rows of small glittering baubles from collars that swept across the chest.
Murata still has plenty of room to push things further, but overall it was a great season for him. The new direction lent his clothes an element of what the Japanese call “ningen kusai,” which translates best to the unmaskable reek of humanity. It was all the better for it––true glamour is always more exciting with some dirt thrown in.
