Nigo was in junior highschool within the 1980s when Japan skilled a growth in style designers, with Kenzo Takada among the many most excessive-profile of the bunch.
“I was very aware of Kenzo and desired it, but didn’t have the money to buy it,” he recalled. “I followed it through fashion magazines and looked at the products in the stores.”
Once he accrued fame and success in style, because the founding father of A Bathing Ape and different manufacturers, Nigo scoured classic resellers and purchased a whole lot of the issues he coveted from that formative interval, amassing a set of clothes that he has but to catalogue, however in all probability numbers within the lots of.
“They’ve been very useful as I put together this first collection,” he mentioned over Zoom from his Tokyo studio. “They provided some inspiration and backbone for what I want to do with Kenzo.”
In an unique interview with WWD, Nigo shared his ardour for and data of Kenzo Takada’s style legacy, his ambitions for the model as its new artistic director and his want to reclaim the “fun and excitement” that Takada introduced to style within the first place.
He is to unveil his first coed assortment on Jan. 23 on the final day of males’s style week in Paris, taking on Galerie Vivienne, a coated passage relationship again to 1823, its tiled flooring bearing the grooves of virtually two centuries of foot site visitors. The venue is symbolic as Kenzo Takada staged his very first style present in April 1970 at his boutique within the Galerie Vivienne.
Expect winks again to the 1980s, when Nigo found Kenzo and stuck his picture of the model essence, together with a number of the streetwear sensibility that’s second nature to the designer, whose actual title is Tomoaki Nagao.
Kenzo’s new branding.
Courtesy of Kenzo
When he was named to the artistic helm of Paris-based Kenzo final September, it already appeared that Nigo was destined for the plum design put up due to some stunning coincidences. He was born in 1970, the 12 months Takada opened his first retailer in Paris; the 2 males graduated from the identical style college in Tokyo, Bunka Fashion College, and Nigo began his style profession the identical 12 months that the Kenzo maison turned a part of French luxurious group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
In a large-ranging dialog, Nigo shared different parallels, up to and together with the same artistic technique.
“Maybe it’s a Japanese thing, but the idea of taking in a lot of disparate influences from various cultures and in some way, managing to fuse them into something that feels like it has its own identity is something that I recognize in the way that Takada worked, and it’s something I’m very close to,” he defined, talking in Japanese with an interpreter at his facet. “The inputs may be different, but I think the process is similar.”
“He could write a book on Kenzo himself,” marveled Sidney Toledano, chairman and chief government officer of LVMH Fashion Group, who chosen Nigo to lead the storied home. “I was so impressed by the knowledge he had about Kenzo Takada. He has some archives that even we don’t have.”
Nigo acknowledged it was a problem pulling collectively his debut fall 2022 collections given the time constraints, and the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, which has made journey between Japan and Continental Europe extraordinarily sophisticated, which means he had to largely acclimatize to a brand new group and impressive venture remotely.
Yet the designer seized the second and took a optimistic strategy.
Nigo
Kuba Dabrowski/WWD
“There was no time to doubt the creative direction,” Nigo mentioned. “It was absolutely clear what needed to be done, and I’m very proud of the way that the teams have come together and understood what I want to achieve, and I’m confident in the output.”
That mentioned, the designer confessed that, regardless of having been within the style enterprise for nearly 30 years, he’s new to runway reveals and judgment from style critics.
“I feel a little bit like a sumo wrestler asked to fight a UFC-style match,” he mentioned with fun. “I can only hope that people like what I’ve done.”
The Tokyo-based designer launched A Bathing Ape (also called Bape) in 1993. He bought the corporate to I.T. in 2011 for about $2.eight million and left the model in 2013. Among his enduring Bape designs is his full-zip “shark” hoodie, which first got here out in 2004 and lately loved a resurgence in curiosity.
A serial style entrepreneur, Nigo additionally partnered with Pharrell Williams to launch the streetwear manufacturers Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream, and launched a model referred to as Human Made, which he wore for the interview: a camouflage-print jacket and a grey, brand T-shirt.
He mentioned it’s apparent that his background in streetwear would affect his designs for Kenzo.
“The thing about streetwear is that it’s become the norm — it’s normal clothes, everyday wear, and extremely accepted now,” Nigo mentioned. “But when I started my career 30 years ago, it was a kind of a counterculture and was not accepted as proper design. As a result, very few people were paying close attention to streetwear.”
In his view, as streetwear has virtually turn into “the default manner of dressing, or even design in some ways,” there’s a spot in understanding of what’s genuine to the class.
“From the perspective of the fashion world, streetwear has not been respected until very recently, whereas I’ve been focused on it for my entire career. So to me, it’s very clear when something’s wrong, when something’s an attempt.”
To ensure, he feels that the trade wants a jolt of contemporary design.
“I feel that quite a lot in fashion at the moment is boring, and that fashion shows have kind of compensated in a way by hyping up the spectacle element as a distraction from the clothes,” he mentioned. “I would like to reconnect with the sense of excitement that can come just from fashion itself.”
The designer confessed to a “parallel ambition for the creative process, for the people who are making the brand to have fun. I believe that if there’s a sense of excitement and fun in the internal creative process, that naturally flows into the stores and into the products.”
To ensure, that’s the legacy of the Takada himself, a style innovator who introduced creative cuts, multicultural inspirations, joyful shade and unique prints to the Paris style scene beginning within the 1970s.
“The character of the house is fun and exciting. And that’s actually necessary in fashion today. Also, Kenzo is about the possibility for anyone to find fashion fun and exciting, so it brings people into the fashion world. It’s for everyone,” Nigo mentioned.
He lauded Takada’s early style reveals, which felt like happenings, and had been among the many first to make music an integral aspect of the spectacle.
When he was at Bunka College, Nigo didn’t research Takada instantly as he was enrolled in style editorial programs, however he witnessed what number of style college students had been influenced by him, although the predominant temper in style at the time was darkish and aloof, closely influenced by Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons, whose 1982 assortment was titled “Destroy.”
While Nigo mentioned he has nice esteem for Kawakubo, he mentioned he was drawn to the “colorful, fun, exciting character of Kenzo.”
“He was the the most high-profile and most famous alumnus of Bunka at the time. And he also used to have quite a deep interaction with the school. He used to come back and give lectures and interact with the students,” he mentioned.
To ensure, Takada was a “true pioneer” in establishing himself in Paris as ready-to-wear was exploding, and likewise having a broad affect on the style scene, eliciting reward from the likes of Yves Saint Laurent and attracting fellow designers akin to Karl Lagerfeld, Sonia Rykiel and Issey Miyake to his reveals.
“It’s interesting because it’s somebody coming from the periphery, moving to the center and having an influence rather than the center spreading its influence outward,” Nigo mentioned. “So that gave me a feeling of possibility, that I could do something outside of Japan as a fashion designer.…I’ve gained confidence from Kenzo sans example.”
Alongside his Human Made model and function as Kenzo’s artistic director, Nigo consults on company branding for Japanese digital firm CyberAgent Inc., and owns a small chain of curry eating places referred to as Curry Up. He additionally has a sake model with Williams, a frequent collaborator, below the Storm Cowboy model.
A famous DJ and music producer, Nigo has a recording studio in his Tokyo design workplaces and does manufacturing for Japanese pop teams. In March, he plans to launch a “collaboration album” on Universal Records that options the likes of Williams, Kid Cudi, A$AP Rocky and Tyler the Creator, all pals of the designer’s.
Nigo is the newest expertise to helm Kenzo since Takada left his namesake style model in 1999. Takada continued to assist the model below a number of artistic configurations, and remained a well-liked and bubbly determine on the Paris style and social scene. He died in October 2020 at age 81 due to problems associated to COVID-19.
LVMH initially appointed Gilles Rosier and Roy Krejberg to design the ladies’s and males’s strains, respectively. Italian designer Antonio Marras finally succeeded Rosier in 2004 and continued till 2011, when LVMH repositioned the model within the then-burgeoning up to date zone and conscripted Opening Ceremony founders Humberto Leon and Carol Lim to lead Kenzo. The duo received a following for tiger-logoed sweatshirts, slip-on sneakers and caps throughout their eight-12 months tenure.
Last April, Portuguese designer Felipe Oliveira Baptista wound up his two-12 months design tenure, throughout which he introduced a classy and inventive contact to Kenzo, partial to enveloping, nomadic silhouettes.
“It’s not an old brand that needs a reboot. It’s a brand that has maintained momentum. Kenzo was still on the radar thanks to its previous designers,” Toledano mentioned, whereas acknowledging a want to additional ignite the model’s improvement below Nigo.
“He has a very clear vision, in addition to his charisma and his personality,” Toledano mentioned, additionally lauding him as a pioneer in melding his style tasks with music, akin to the late Virgil Abloh, who was additionally a famous DJ and collaborated with Nigo on two LV2 capsule collections for Louis Vuitton in 2020 and 2021.
“The fact that Nigo has this music background, he understands this movement, he understands the new community worldwide,” Toledano mentioned. “The new generation is so influenced by music.”
Toledano mentioned it’s too early to speak about enterprise ambitions, however cited an “excellent reaction” throughout the Kenzo home when Nigo’s appointment was revealed final September.
“The trade also is reacting very well,” he mentioned. “We have a man with a passion for the brand and a vision. Nigo is here to write a story with several chapters.”
SEE ALSO:
Kenzo Picks Streetwear Guru Nigo as Its Next Designer
Catching Up With Nigo
7 Facts to Know About Fashion Designer Kenzo Takada
