Chitose Abe’s new collection is a tribute to “game changers,” dudes like Jimi Hendrix, Pablo Picasso, Kurt Cobain, and the English tailor Tommy Nutter, among other assorted icons of cool. The idea, the designer said at a preview, was “to take things from their style and to put them all together, as one.” To Sacai-ify them, if you will.
Abe is a game changer herself—first, in the way she manipulates multiple aspects of different garments, synthesizing them into something original, and, second, in the way her ideas have become so influential. You see her signature hybrids at so many labels now. How did she make the concept new this time around? Seizing on multiple points of reference was a clever way to give this collection depth and variety. You can Sacai a lot, with a white bandleader jacket à la Hendrix boasting heavy-duty frogging and a patchworked, multihued scarf-print dress, or you can Sacai a little, with, say, a navy sweater and pajama pants. Was the starting point there Serge Gainsbourg? Jane Birkin? It doesn’t matter; it looked cool.
Riffing on the styles of the famous, she worked her way through many of her own hallmarks, from deconstructed marinières to lacy army surplus. One statement tee flipped a Joe Strummer quote, “Passion is a fashion,” so it read Fashion is a passion. Abe is passionate, and she certainly knows her stuff. The Daniel Johnston T-shirts were based on one that Cobain wore to the MTV Video Music Awards circa 1992.
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