Trust Ryota Murakami to find exquisite beauty in a boring neighborhood supermarket. The Pillings designer, who makes unique and sensitive knitwear, titled his new collection My Basket after a small Japanese supermarket of the same name—and the “little sentiments” of daily life that he sees there. “I wanted to recreate everyday clothes, incorporating subtle wrinkles, imperfections, and other things that you might overlook. I wanted to turn everyday Japanese clothing into something special.”
The show took place in the brand’s showroom in Sendagaya, to a soundtrack of calm piano music. The sullen-faced models, with their slept-on frizzy hair and tired eyes, looked bookish in their belted blazers, crumpled granny knits, and cross-body bags. A little awkward and a little unkempt, they were overflowing with personality—each outfit an artful play on the tension between the dowdy and the stylish.
There was some serious technical skill on show; Murakami clearly has a couturier’s sensibility. Cotton blouses were artfully layered with wrinkles; gossamer cardigans sat delicately over shirts; pajama floral prints were faded (“like denim”, said Murakami); and a black floral knit appeared as though hundreds of blue and white petals had become trapped in its wool. Points also for the masterful silhouettes in the belted shift dresses, and the padded tailoring that still managed to look flattering. Everything had a charming wonkiness to it. But the sensitivity and intention Murakami put into the imperfections (if you can really call them that) meant that everything also looked incredibly chic.
Speaking backstage, Murakami explained that he had been inspired by the clothes of people who at first glance don’t seem interested in fashion. “Japanese dressing is often discussed in fashion terms, such as Harajuku cuteness, otaku, and avant-garde, but I was more interested in things that don’t fit into that context,” he said. Instead of these tropes the collection evoked something much more banal: an old woman shopping for a new blouse at the shotengai, or the frumpiness of some floral pajamas. There were personal inflections too: the cute faces of anthropomorphic characters from the kids’ TV show Nico Nico Pun, which Murakami would watch with his mother, were subtly embroidered on some of the knits. “She used to knit them onto my own sweaters when I was young,” he said.
Good fashion designers are able to tap into wider art and culture to find the beauty that informs their collections; great ones have an ability to summon it from nowhere in particular. Murakami’s magic is that he is able to bestow his tender and caring eye upon the forgotten, the dull, or the ignored, and transform it into something extraordinary.
