“My last collection was about my childhood and my own experiences, but this time I wanted to do the opposite and explore something I had never experienced before: the so-called luxury world.” So said Yohei Ohno after his fall show, which took place inside Tokyo’s Sen-Oku Hakukokan Museum. For a kid who grew up in the Japanese countryside, away from any sense of glitz and glamor, it was an exercise in addressing luxury as an alien concept.
The clothes––toweled bathrobes, comfy tracksuits, silk blouses, and dramatic dresses––showed the naive ideals of what Ohno interpreted as a moneyed lifestyle. “It’s about the life of the rich as seen from the perspective of a non-rich person, and the adult world as seen from a child’s perspective,” he explained. Coats swept asymmetrically to the side, cascades of fabric slung over the arm: a caricature pose of what Ohno imagined as a wealthy woman carrying a handbag. Elsewhere, architectural vests (that were actually handbags) were decorated with argyle prints, and Ohno applied his fake-sportswear-inspired logo from last season to golf shirts––again a nod to that high-low mix. Vivienne Westwood’s draping had also been an influence––you could see it clearly in the twisted dresses––but Ohno is good at putting his own spin on things.
He’d also taken a cheeky snipe at what he saw as a peculiarly Japanese ideal of luxury, and referenced Burberry Blue Label—a now defunct brand in Japan that licensed the designs of the British company, often to questionable effect—as another ironic point of reference. “I wanted to make fun of the sense of luxury that Japanese people have. I wonder why everyone is trying to imitate European luxury brands,” he said. It’s a great question, and refreshing to see a Tokyo designer address it with such self-awareness and humor.
Overall he’d given himself a tough concept to reckon with, and it wasn’t clear by the end of the show if he’d properly worked it out, but Ohno has an undeniably unique point of view that is always a pleasure to witness. To see it at its best, this collection was about confronting an uneasy sense of yearning: yearning across the vast chasm between country bumpkin and city slicker; the struggling masses yearning for more; and, maybe, a young sensitive kid from nowhere in particular, peering out at the wider world with all its unnameable pretensions, and yearning to be a part of it.
