admin Shinya Kozuka’s spring 2024 show took place in the vast outdoor plaza of the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium Sub Arena, where he led us on a somnambulant stroll under the full moon. It was fitting: Kozuka’s message this season was pulled from a story in which the writer Natsume Soseki translated “I love you” to the infinitely more poetic “the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?” Not every designer can bend the skies to his will, but the weather gods were clearly on Kozuka’s side tonight.
Back down on earth, there was some polishing left to do. The models were at first too far away to see, and when they did come close enough the floodlighting was so one-sided that their fronts were cast in shadow. When you could see them, the clothes occasionally had so much going on that it was hard to parse the details.
On the other hand, what Shinya Kozuka does is loveable precisely because it’s all a bit mad and wonky. A Central Saint Martins alum, he has something of a London sensibility about his clothes in the way that they can seem a little hodgepodge and experimental (his inspirations span from Raf Simons to Margaret Howell to Dragonball), but are ultimately charming—just look at those honk-shoo sleeping caps!
Many of the pieces were decorated with Kozuka’s original sketches, which he does on his iPad, and which look like scribbly toile de jouy. “I always make pictures of what I’m thinking about or inspired by, and develop the collection from there,” he said. This time they depicted the banal beauty of daily life, and so the oversized tailoring and denim were printed with scenes you might see when on the street: an old lady walking her shiba inu; the welcoming sign of a tonkatsu restaurant; merry-makers staggering home from an izakaya. “I think that clothes are a part of the scenery of a person’s life,” he said. “Like when you go on a first date and confess your feelings to someone, the clothes you wear become part of that experience.
Kozuka had also been thinking about Yves Klein blue, and noticed how closely the color matched the blue-and-gold aluminium cans of The Premium Malt’s beer that he often sips on his walks. This, he felt, made for a familiar point of reference, and served as the color palette for the collection. The resulting broderie anglaise shirts, gold brocade pajamas, tinselly cardigans, and blue silk bombers were individually special, and may well be worn on plenty of those first dates come spring.
