Yu Amatsu Debuts At Fashion Week Tokyo With Wowing Collection

Yu Amatsu makes his debut as the designer of legendary house Hanae Mori in a few days; the new gig firmly defines his design guidelines: the party dresses for Mori and “real clothes” for his own brand, A Degree Fahrenheit, which he showed at day two of Fashion Week Tokyo yesterday. The collection focused on The 8° F Thermal Difference, the temperature difference between the earth’s surface and the air that causes mirages. A former patternmaker for Marc Jacobs, Amatsu worked with basics, experimenting with the optical mirage idea via mostly decorative ultra-lightweight zippers that curved easily, placed at angles to create silhouettes with spatial variations different from front and back. A series of layered cotton sweats opened the show; the zip accents curved around the body on rounded cropped cocoon tops and skirts, sometimes weighing down fabrics to create drapes. The other silhouette was long and sharp, like a floor-length baseball jacket with an unexpected horizontal zipper opened at the back, or a trench with a sexy slit riding all the way up to the collar or down the legs of jeans at unusual angles. Envisioning speed, he played sportif and elegance off of each other with sleek futuristic results.

Off-site in Roppongi, the Belgian-trained Thai designer Ek Thongprasert showed his second line, Curated by Ek Throngprasert, in an open space filled with the spring sunshine. Each season Curated is inspired by Thongprasert’s love of art. This show was an homage to the what-if narratives of the Daniel Arsham exhibition The Future Is Always Now and Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’sIQ84. The collection, dubbed “2Q15,” proposed a new experience of African culture—what the world might be like if it were dominated by the African continent.

The designer curated a series of images of great art through the ages remade with black versions of Napoleon, Jesus, and Adam and Eve, and on another side of the room models appeared on a small stage in looks directly inspired by collaged photos on display. The soundtrack mix of the sounds of cooking, gardening, and daily African life heightened the cleverly executed imaginary anthropological experience.

Next month the 14-year-old label Mintdesigns launches a 240-page retrospective book with Japanese publisher Seigensha, featuring Mintdesigns’ signature textile designs, invitation artwork, and behind-the-scenes material. The brand takes an original approach to fashion-as-product-design, and last night’s show, dubbed “Smoke,” attracted big-name journalists. Designers Hokuto Katsui and Nao Yagi looked to movies from the 1960s—their less-than-high-definition cinematographic quality and the idea of obscured images that fade with time. The clothing fit into three story lines, two unified by transparent fabrics that, like smoke in light, revealed prints incorporated within or layered underneath. Hair and makeup genius Katsuya Kamo shielded the heads and faces of models with scarves to mysterious effect.