Icon of Fashion: Kenzo: East meets West

Back in the Spring of 1970, the fashion world was graced with a cultural hybridity of fashion which saw the designer Kenzo Takada, combine essences of French luxury with Japanese fashion to incorporate his heritage into his brand upon his debut in the industry in Paris. Kenzo's first ever boutique which was located in Paris and was decorated in jungle inspired décor and called the 'Jungle Jap' to further translate a flavour of exoticness and avant-garde styling into the French industry.  The nuances and the graphic elements of his prints are derived from the Japanese art of xylography which perfectly match with the couture tradition of the French fashion.

"His daring blend of colours and pattern have the light touch of an engraving. He knows how to take three meters of cotton, and a piece of trim. and make them blossom into a dress."- ELLE Magazine's review of Kenzo in 1971.

In terms of Kenzo's designing technique and since he is highly influenced by culture and the importance of the headdress (which is an extremely important symbol for many traditions) the designer starts by sketching the head, which highlights his preference for folklore and tradition and distinguishes a character within his fashion.



As a brand, Kenzo is never fixed on just portraying one type of look and instead prefers to look at fashion from all different angles and see it as a creative, continuous adventure. Over the past fourty years, the brands collections have included Romanian peasant skirts as inspiration as well as Mexican rebozos and heavy Scandinavian sweaters which were seen during the designers 1973 show. Other cultural influences and designs have consisted of Chinese coolie looks combined with Portuguese purses, Riviera awning-striped beach shirts, and t-shirt dresses for full cultural diversity which were debuted back in 1975. Then if that was not enough influence from different origins, Kenzo continued this theme throughout his later collections in the latter half of the 20th century by communicating visions of Native American stylings in a highly textural, colourful, and feather-inflected collection in 1976, Egyptian leanings and patterns in 1979 and North African inspiration, with elements of an excursion to India for a modified Nehru suit in 1984.

In addition, Kenzo has been fascinated by fine art and has been known to have used Wassily Kandinsky and David Hockney as inspiration, as well as calligraphy when it came to the visualisation of certain looks.  In terms of his colour pallet, Kenzo has also gone for global vibrant, filled with ethnic eruptions, play of pattern, and unorthodox colour combinations. Furthermore, since the brand believes in harmoniously developing clothes with cultural influence and meaning, with every collection the brand creates, they intend to develop a sense of expression to translate the personality of Kenzo himself, who was known in his early days of fashion to have raised barbed issues of ethnicity by insisting upon the term ''Jap' (short for Japanese) for his first collections, encouraging a racist insult to be seen in a positive identity. Although his style is extremely globally influenced, Kenzo prioritises the idea of making sure that his clothes are presented in extremely modern and integrated way.

"It pleases me when people say I have influence. But I am influenced by the world that says I influence it. The world I live in is my influence." - Kenzo




Kenzo's Fall 2016 Ready To Wear