Margiela’s presence in Japan is storied, to say the least.

Visiting with the Antwerp Six throughout the 1980s, Martin Margiela found an early visual precedent in Japan’s traditional craftsmanship, design, and aesthetic philosophies. He would go on to open his first ever store there, and soon after expanded his footprint to several boutiques across Tokyo and Osaka, cultivating an incredible cult following among the Japanese public, who saw him as a bridge between Eastern and Western designs in both his garments and philosophies.

Less storied is the financial and corporate structure that was built to uphold this relationship. ここのえ株式会社 (Kokonoe Co.) was established in July of 1999, shortly before the opening of the Tokyo flagship and Margiela’s formal opening to the country and market, and is an important entity to better understand the Belgian relationship with the Japanese on not only an aesthetic level, but also a financial and structural one.

The creation of Kokonoe・ここのえの誕生

By the late 1990s, Martin Margiela had captivated European audiences for over a decade. Growing demand in Japan for his clothing soon spread spread his designs across retailers in the Kanto, Kyushu, Tohoku and Chubu regions. That demand, and the Japanese public’s longtime embrace of his work, philosophy, and business model, made a flagship store in Japan a natural choice — albeit an unprecedented one.

As recently as 1993, Margiela’s main presence in Tokyo was limited to one, small experimental boutique — Seibu Seed Hall, an experimental arm of the Seibu department store in the bustling Shibuya ward.1 Yet, half a decade later, the maison’s footprint had already increased significantly, with accounts comprising major boutiques and department stores like United Arrows, Mid West, Isetan, and Advanced Cique.2

Advanced Cique was a particularly important one, as it was run by Japanese importer and retailer Orizzonti, a major player in the Belgian fashion trade into Japan. The Orizzonti connection was so strong — alongside the growing demand for the Belgian’s collections — that NEUF S.A., Maison Martin Margiela’s company in France (founded by Martin himself and Jenny Meirens), looked to this Japanese importer and retailer to incorporate and partner with. Together with Mitsubishi Corp., the three formally established a limited liability company in Japan, entitled Kokonoe, in July of 1999.3

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By March of 2001, Veronique Branquinho was fully in her prime. Having shown six full collections at Paris Fashion Week, the second-wave Antwerp designer had cemented herself as a Belgian darling, embracing the austere, minimal tailoring and construction of her antecedents like Ann Demeulemeester and contemporaries like Olivier Theyskens.

Her dark, somber yet elegant Autumn-Winter 2001/02 collection had a particular emphasis on what Branquinho stressed as the duality of a woman — “a fragile, delicate side that could break at any moment, and its opposite, an impulsive side.” Seeing this in herself, and her clothing as a direct extension of it, Branquinho’s seventh collection is particularly important, sitting near the top of her somewhat bell-curve shaped design career. Her men’s clothing would not debut for several more years, with Branquinho’s turn-of-the-century era still remaining her strongest and most lucid vision of the modern woman, and all her complicated manifestations of self.

VERONIQUE BRANQUINHO

I express the delicacy of a woman and the impulsive parts within them. It’s an expression of a duality I also hold myself.

Fashion News vol. 70, June 2001

“To wear Veronique Branquinho, you don’t need a perfect figure, or a particular hair or skin color. I express the duality women hold — a fragile, delicate side that could break at any moment, and its opposite, an impulsive side — all these contradictory emotions.”

Dressed in black with silver hair, Veronique Branquinho speaks quietly, as if confirming her own words to herself.

A graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Veronique Branquinho made her Paris debut with her Spring-Summer 1998 collection. The most recent show on 13 March 2001 marked her seventh season, and she’s already at the forefront of the young-designer generation.

FN: Designers from the Antwerp Royal Academy are doing remarkable work in fashion right now. What was your time at the Academy like as a student?

VB: As a student, being at the Academy meant being sheltered from society. The teachers never gave concrete direction — they’d just say “go find something.” I had time to really look at myself, and through that I came to clearly understand what my own individuality was. That was crucial for making work later.

FN: After showing your own collection at a Paris gallery in October 1997, you joined Paris Fashion Week from Fall-Winter 1998-99 onward.

VB: As a professional designer, I had to start reconciling business with creation. Even facing business pressures, keeping my identity intact without bending it has been hard. I think today’s fashion world is brutal for young designers — journalists demand high quality every season, and to survive as a business you have to produce and distribute large volumes. And if you fail, there’s no second chance.

FN: Journalists have high expectations for your collection every season. Have you ever been conscious of that gaze — wanting to deliberately subvert it?

VB: Whatever journalists say, all I can do is give my best. I’m already fully occupied just staying true to myself, so there’s no point worrying what journalists or buyers think.

FN: For instance, the Spring-Summer 2001 collection was built around the image of a girl running into a forest — where does your inspiration come from?

VB: Sometimes from a book I’m reading, sometimes pure chance. Once an image appears, I let it mature inside me. Last season, for example, there were two contradictory images — something eerie, forest-like, and a delicate girl running into it. So I took something delicate, like a ballet skirt, and laser-cut it roughly. I wanted to express women’s duality — holding delicacy and roughness at once.

FN: We see a lot of asymmetric motifs — is that another place the duality shows up?

VB: That’s different from “duality.” Asymmetry is just something I use to give the clothes variation.

FN: One designer told us they deconstruct their own past work and rebuild it into something new.

VB: I can’t work that way — deconstructing and rebuilding past work. Rather than negating and dismantling what I’ve done, my approach is to evolve from it. The speed of that evolution honestly surprises even me. I feel like I gain energy as I evolve.

FN: What about collaborating with other artists?

VB: Until a collection is shown, “Veronique Branquinho” is “myself” — very abstract, hard to share that sensibility with someone else. Even with something like music, I think staying true to my own image matters, so I’m not considering it right now.

FN: What about designing for other houses? You previously designed for Ruffo Research — what do you make of the current wave of designer changes at heritage houses?

VB: I like traditional fashion, and if a brand genuinely interested me, I might take it on. Coco Chanel, for instance — one woman founded a brand and built it into something enormous. If I ever had the chance to be part of a house with that kind of tradition, I might try it. I’d consider that a real honor. But right now I’m not thinking about it at all. If that conversation came up, I’d think about it then.

“Tuxedo jackets with satin-faced lapels and wide-leg pants, double-breasted long coats, red-and-black striped stockings, wrinkle-treated leather P-jackets and pants: masculine black continues throughout. Strength was folded into what had been chic pieces the previous season. Dark patchwork in leather, fur, and velour stands out distinctively. The layering remains unchanged: velour leggings under leather over-skirts, and the like.” — Fashion News

While the north of Belgium, in the Dutch speaking region of Flanders, was busy amassing a great fashion armada, a young man far away in Brussels quietly, and abruptly, burst onto the global fashion scene like a flare in the night sky.

A world apart from his northern compatriots, Olivier Theyskens' work at his own namesake label would only span a short four years. While incredibly brief, no designer created such daring, elegant, and surreal designs as Theyskens — a surprising sentiment in retrospect, as few seem to pay credence to the impact, legacy, and sheer innovation of the Belgian's original run at his label, particularly in terms of dark, gothic and romantic fashion design. While innovators in this realm seem limited to names like Ann Demeulemeester, Thierry Mugler, Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, and Alexander McQueen, Theyskens' designs are critically important to its continuity, both in Belgium and beyond.

The original trio of the Belgian’s collections is particularly impactful, and a closer look illustrates his unveiling of a dark, victorian revivalist flame: Autumn-Winter 1998/99, Spring-Summer 1999, and Autumn-Winter 1999/00.

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Of the many conjurations stirred up by the notion of “Japanese Fashion”, few surpass the shoemaking prowess, textile experimentation, and utter peculiarity of Nagasaki-born, Fukuoka-raised designer Mihara Yasuhiro.

Now known widely for his amorphous, Cronenberg-esque sneaker designs, his 1990s southern Japan origins speak to a different — and more uniquely Japanese — character, one that captures a core essence of one of Japan’s greatest eras of craftsmanship and experimentation.

In the following June 2002 interview, conducted by MR. High Fashion’s Nobuko Kojima (and accompanied by photographs from the eminent Josui Yasuda), we see the emergent, experimental, and still thawing form of Yasuhiro — one that takes us into the now long-gone world of alien innovation of Japan’s late-1990s artisans, along with the team that helped him realize some of the country’s most radical and unusual footwear and textile creations.

MIHARA YASUHIRO: DESIGNER’S SPECIAL FROM TOKYO

Mihara Yasuhiro. Shoes as a compressed universe, clothing as distance from self.

Mihara Yasuhiro is a traveler through time and space. Using sensitivity as a magnet, he crosses the axes from past to future, from micro to macro, and at those intersections, makes things. Shoes, he says, are a condensed universe; clothing is an expansive presence that reflects one’s distance from oneself. His creations are therefore full of affection for the objects he has encountered in the past, respect for the craftsmen who carry on traditional techniques, and a fresh ambition to project all of that toward the future. And yet the soul that moves so freely always returns: both to the skin, and to the daily function of wearing.

Rider’s Jacket

A rider’s jacket worn throughout middle and high school, when Mihara was playing in a band. Every stud was applied by hand. The illustrations and lettering are also his own.

Shoes

Made independently while a student at Tama Art University. The film combining sneaker and leather shoe construction is a characteristic design visible in his work to this day.

INTERVIEW

growing up in a strange place.

On my desk sits a flip book called Powers of Ten — each page captures the view at a successive power of ten meters, from plus to minus, so that flipping through it in an instant takes you from a galaxy light-years away down to the proton inside a cell of a man napping on a lawn. I pulled it from the shelf because somewhere in it, I thought, there must be a world that resembles Mihara Yasuhiro’s. The book moves through space in a straight line — but add the four-dimensional warping of filmmaker David Lynch and the trompe l’oeil twists of painter M.C. Escher, and you arrive at Mihara World exactly. His workspace, with its unique way of carving out three-dimensional space, is startling — how did such a place suited to him even exist? “I love it — it feels like it could swallow you whole,” he says of the circular hole in the ceiling of the press room, which is pure Lynch. The staircase connecting the atelier rooms, changing angle at each half-landing, is pure Escher.

How did he come to inhabit this strange space?

Put that way, it might sound like something glittering and bizarre — but in person he’s a gentle-eyed, unpretentious person. When he starts talking he can’t stop, which is less loquaciousness than sincerity: no exaggeration, no performance, just reaching for words in every way possible so that you understand him at actual scale. He began making shoes while studying in the textile department at Tama Art University. “I started questioning the world of warp and weft, and what I arrived at was leather — fibers intertwined, with a natural quality.” He acquired knowledge at a tannery in Asakusa while receiving basic instruction in last-making from craftsmen, teaching himself shoes from there. In 1996, with manufacturer backing, he launched the original brand MIHARAYASUHIRO. Graduating from university in 1997, he began extensive collaboration with designers including Keita Maruyama. The following year he opened his own shop. In 1999 he established SOSU, relocated the shop to its current Minami-Aoyama location, launched a womenswear collection from SS2000, and menswear from AW2000-2001.

His relationship with creation began in fine art. His father was a researcher of vaccines for poultry farming; his mother an oil painter. Under his mother’s intensive instruction he painted continuously — pure art. “Dark paintings only. I loved demons — their sigils, their contracts, the hierarchy of angels and devils. I practically memorized the encyclopedia of yokai.”

Born in Nagasaki, he grew up in the mountains outside Fukuoka. A concrete square house with a garden of overgrown weeds where chickens and tanuki1 roamed freely. The area belonged to a shrine forest protected by small shrines every hundred meters, with a spring called “immortal water” and rumors of great serpents. Stories of the supernatural were never in short supply. “A zashiki warashi lived in the house — I often heard its footsteps. Several people with spiritual sensitivity have seen it. Sounds, furniture moving, poltergeist activity year-round. The world of yokai felt more real to me than the ordinary world.” Playing in the mountains until dark, he would find his way home by following the narrow channels of wind moving between the trees. What fantastical days — like GeGeGe no Kitaro or Monsters, Inc.

Then a major change happened. “My real life started at eleven. My brother, two years older, took me surfing. The surfers looked so cool. I saved up money and bought a blouson — up until then I’d only had hand-me-downs. The team blousons and military pieces from that period are the origin of my clothing work.” The atelier had more than a dozen worn work jackets hanging on a rack.

“I didn’t study at school, but clothes teach me what I need to know.” Absorbing technique directly from people and objects — that’s his method, aiming not for number one but for one of a kind.

Humor. Chaos.

“When I decided on my direction, I gave up on art — or despaired because of it. Two-dimensional space had been exhausted and saturated by Picasso, and while art approaches from a position of stoic refusal, fashion is a place where you can make things without destruction or sacrifice, without hurting anything. I was interested in the dynamism — not just giving form to ideas, but the economics that follow, the penetration into daily life, the repeated cycles of production and consumption.”

Approaching from textiles rather than design is characteristic of him. Curiosity moved toward shoes, then expanded into clothing. “There are two filters for expressing the human image and lifestyle I have in mind — shoes are like a long-standing friend. Art, entertainment, sport, tradition — whatever you speak to them, they answer.” Because the shoe’s upper and sole are a its own universe, he can pursue things to the point of madness and still play. “Clothing is like a lover introduced by a friend. There’s joy in discovering various items in a wide field while gauging the distance.” If, say, there are twenty meters between him and a skirt on a ruler — by transforming the concept of the skirt and absorbing it into his own value system, he can close that distance to one meter. Not too close, not too far.

A press room where both friend and lover are present. The menswear shoes add freshness to lasts2 and materials — a hand-sewn traditional type, and a sneaker type playing with print and colorways. Beyond the originals, he has design contracts with British shoemaker Loake for the former sensibility, and Puma for the latter — both longtime friends by name. The womenswear shoes are singular: a mule with an upstanding vamp edge, a pump that is half tassel slip-on, and a sandal where the back strap doubles as a thong. Both shoes and clothing share the same quality — warm humor held inside sharp forms.

The clothing follows: trousers whose waistband folds back to read as a collar, a shirt with completely different front and back characters (for office and labor, respectively), a skirt that fuses simple women's denim with a khaki chino full of cargo pockets. Playfulness conceits everywhere. "Hasn't making things been getting too serious lately? I want to show something earnest as absurd — it's a farce, but one with conviction. I love jokes, gimmicks, irony. Because I think human beings are endearing." And humans are contradictory creatures — capable of love and capable of war. "I'm interested in existence rather than in judgments of good or bad, so I want to bring contrasting worlds into coexistence. Classic and contemporary, function and play." Just as a cell connects all the way to the cosmos, everything from his immediate surroundings out to four dimensions is mixed together as design source. That breadth of scale is what makes him — at first glance, someone you might mistake for simply eccentric.

He loves chaos. “People say I leave the workspace in constant disorder, but I know where everything is. Chaos over rationality and comfort. Containing the tension of a daily life that can become theatre with a single shift of feeling.” His sensibility knows what to choose from the ever-changing ten thousand things. His hands know how to give it form. His heart knows who to work with. And he knows who should wear it. And so people find themselves slowly drawn into his charisma — grounded, neither oppressive nor threatening.

Atelier Notes

Right page: The atelier consists of three small rooms connected by a U-shaped staircase across the first floor, mezzanine, and second floor; Mihara Yasuhiro’s desk is at the window at the far end of the second floor.

Left page: 01. Next season’s design and material boards pinned to bags. 02. On the cabinet housing wooden lasts, the Kondo doll introduced in this magazine’s October issue last year in the “1981 Items” feature. 03. Past design drawings stored and organized by season. 04. Mihara’s desk — a design in progress. 05. The iron used to apply the brand’s burn mark. 06. Next to Mihara’s desk, a rack of personal military pieces and vintage clothing that also serve as idea sources. 07. Leading up to the atelier.

Art books referenced in the atelier: Winston Smith, ARTCRIME; Jannis Kounellis, HATJE CANTZ.

PRESS ROOM

a space for inspiration.

The first atelier was in Asakusa. “I loved it — the neighborhood itself felt like it was generating something,” says Mihara Yasuhiro. Being close to factories was good too, but inconvenient for sales and PR work. He moved to Yoyogi-Uehara, but “there was too much order and rationality — it didn’t suit me.” The current atelier and press room are in the same building in Harajuku; it was less the neighborhood than the variety of the space itself that won him over.

Both rooms occupy two floors of box-like space divided by staircases and fencing, with no doors except at the entrance. “I can’t tell whether it’s rational or irrational — the behavioral strangeness of it provokes tension and a kind of emotion. Maybe because the architect’s intention seems to hover there like a living spirit.” The glass walls and windows that bring in natural light, the position and shape of the balcony. Everything is full of unexpectedness. The atelier staircase in particular, bending twice at right angles to connect three floors, brought back the feeling of turning a corner in an unfamiliar street — equal parts anticipation and unease. At the top, at the far end: his desk. Puma samples in progress, reference materials, art books occupy every inch of the limited space without missing a single gap.

“Almost everything inspires me from daily life, so I can’t settle down unless things are chaotic. Like my mother’s atelier, where motifs and tools were scattered everywhere — ox bones, a frog skewered by a mantis, things like that.” A pencil with an eraser in a drawer, for example. “The idea is already in the form. If you try to design that forcibly, it gets wrapped in cotton wool and the essence shifts. Rather than adding design, giving form to spirit — that’s what this season’s collection is.” He dislikes going home. Like a child absorbed in a game, he can’t bring himself to press the reset button from work to private life. “I hate switching off — so I just keep going, fall asleep in the atelier, or wander around in the middle of the night and come back in the morning.” Receiving and absorbing a flow of time that runs differently from any clock, this space is also a cradle of creation.

STAFF

Megumi Kato: Accounting

Yosuke Ishida: Production Control

Ayumi Shibata: Planner / Production Control

Noe Okamoto: Press

Kyohei Iwashiro: Planner

Kaname Nakamura: Press Assistant / Shop Staff

Kaori Sasaki: Pattern Maker

COLLABORATERS

Tetsuro Nagase — Stylist
Looking back after going our separate ways

Before becoming a stylist, Nagase was a sales representative — a sensitive adult who could pick up on things from a position close to the customer. Styling for MIHARAYASUHIRO, he also handles the brand’s overall sense of visual direction. “Leather shoes — his feel for them is direct, it goes straight to the shop,” says Nagase of Mihara. The styling approach is: “I don’t impose my own style on MIHA — I follow where he leads, and try to add sensitivity from that position.”

They met when Nagase was working in sales. “He was buying things at the shop, and I thought there was something interesting about this person. We started talking.” Since then they have worked together, and Nagase has seen the collection grow from its earliest days.

“With Mihara, the design doesn’t come from pursuing trends. He has his own world, and my job is to understand it and pull it out. Catalog shoots, look books — styling, in this case, isn’t about adding something. It’s about removing.” On the current collection: “The technique is different, the approach to materials is different. This time especially. In a good way — something that feels very Mihara, genuinely good.” The photographs show shop shots, and catalog imagery from the ‘01 and ‘02 collections. “Work continues.”

Ryosuke Uehara — Graphic Designer
Conversations that run for eight hours without stopping

He couldn’t get into his school of choice, so he enrolled somewhere else — that’s where he encountered graphic design. Uehara Ryosuke. His work now includes commissioned pieces, and he has been working with Mihara for four years. “Particularly for sample production — items that don’t appear in the catalog. Specialized work.” Continuous collaboration.

“One person — I like working with one person at a time. Eight hours of conversation, nonstop.” That’s the rhythm of his work with Mihara. “We were the same age, so at graduation we talked constantly. At the time I was doing a lot of logo design.” From there, invited to work on the MIHARAYASUHIRO collection graphics:

“A New York AD offered me the chance to see the collection — the energy of it moved me. Then Mihara called and said ‘come.’ So I went.” At the show, the graphic elements of the collection struck him. Since then: “I feel the energy with him. It’s not a matter of good or bad design. There’s something we’re both chasing. Morning discussions that go till night. Not just about work — all kinds of things.”

“It’s difficult to explain what I feel. I think... I can feel it. But that feeling — how to form it. Sometimes I think I can’t keep up with him.” On what he values in the collaboration: “Honesty. Mihara doesn’t flatter. Says exactly what he thinks.” That directness, for Uehara, is the foundation. “I can tell right away whether something is good or not. I’ve started to trust that instinct.”

Photographs: ‘98 Singapore collection invitation; ‘00 AW collection invitation; ‘01 AW collection.

Yoshihide Hayakawa — Shoemaker
The power to perceive the era

At the factory, processing leather into shoe components — Hayakawa Yoshihide, shoemaker. “Mihara’s color sense is outstanding. The way light shines on it — that’s what’s beautiful,” he says. “I’ve been doing this a long time, but the way he develops colors is something special. Grey, for instance — there are countless greys. The particular grey he’s looking for is something I can sense from him.”

He has worked with Mihara since the early days. “Before SOSU was established — we were introduced through someone.” The connection predates the current brand structure. “Leather is a living material. The same hide gives different results depending on how it’s processed, what dye is used, even the weather on the day. Mihara understands that. He doesn’t just specify a color and expect a result — he comes to see, he touches, he adjusts.”

On the current season: “The hair-on hide in particular. The way the pattern is cut — it’s unusual. You don’t see many people working with it the way he does.” The natural grain and texture of the material, left to speak.

“Mihara asks things that are technically difficult. Sometimes I think — can this actually be done? But he says ‘let’s try.’ And usually it works.” On why Mihara’s shoes resonate: “Because they don’t look like shoes that were designed at a desk. You can feel that they were made with hands, made with time.” The perception of the era — Hayakawa identifies that as Mihara’s particular strength.

Photographs: wooden lasts; leather samples; Hayakawa at work; Puma and MIHARAYASUHIRO collaboration design.

Kaname Sakuma — Leather Tanning Maker
Learning from the origin

Leather tanning, dyeing, finishing; the factory where Sakuma Kaname works processes raw hide into the materials Mihara uses. “染め、スプレー、塗り” — dyeing, spraying, coating. Each technique changes the character of the leather entirely. “Mihara comes to the factory. He wants to understand where the material comes from, how it’s made. That attitude — learning from the origin — is something we share.”

Their relationship began eight years ago. “At the time, Mihara was still working in Asakusa. He came to us directly.” Since then: continuous collaboration, the relationship deepening as the brand has grown. “He specifies things that aren’t in any reference book. New textures, finishes that don’t exist yet. We work it out together.” The factory —株式会社 (a tanning company) — handles processing across the range of leathers Mihara uses. “The hide itself has character. Our job is to bring out what’s already there.”

On what makes Mihara different from other designer clients: “He knows materials. Knows what’s possible and what isn’t — or rather, he keeps asking what might be possible that we haven’t tried. That pushes us forward too.” Sakuma has seen Mihara’s material vocabulary grow over the years. “From the beginning it was always leather. That hasn’t changed. But what he does with it — that keeps expanding.”

“These craftsmen and this work — they’re what I want to keep doing.”

The period between the spring of 1998 and the summer of 2000 was one of massive importance to Belgian designer Lieve Van Gorp. By 1998, Van Gorp had already left her teaching position at the Antwerp Academy, fully diving into both womens’ and mens’ collections, presenting her last non-runway collection in the Marais district in October of that year. By March 1999, Van Gorp staged her first full runway presentation, presenting both sexes side-by-side for Autumn-Winter 1999/00. Her sophomore runway show, Spring-Summer 2000, was staged at Café de la Danse, evoking the chiaroscuro, surreal world-building of American filmmaker David Lynch. In the summer of 2000, Van Gorp would tour Japan, sitting down with Mr High Fashion and other press, as well as visiting long-time stockists like United Arrows.

Below are five snapshots from this whirlwind period of Van Gorp’s transition from Belgian insider to breakout star — beginning with a June 1998 Mr High Fashion interview and an October 1998 feature from Studio Voice, both visiting Van Gorp in her Antwerp atelier. These are followed by three more pieces from Mr High Fashion, including a showcase of her Spring-Summer 1999 collection, an in-depth feature on her Antwerp atelier and retail space, and a sit-down interview during her time in Tokyo.

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A peculiar mix of gothicism, hyper-functional utilitarianism, and urban American streetwear, Raf Simons' spring-summer 2003 collection, "Consumed," funneled these nascent aesthetics into something strikingly new at the time, instigating a larger conversation around hyper-consumerism, maximalist branding, and the fashion system's overall precarity in the rapidly shifting early 2000s.

Most conversations around this highly regarded collection, particularly in streetwear and hypebeast circles, center around its graphic print hoodies and scarcity in secondhand market, but far less discussed is its actual inspiration: the American conceptual artist Ashley Bickerton. A pioneer of “Neo-Geo” — coined to describe his and similar artists like Jeff Koons’ hyper-capitalist aesthetic — Bickerton’s largely voluminous wall sculptures were defined by their maximalist logo design, becoming a direct precedent for the graphic and material language Simons would later employ.

Simons specifically credited the collection as “an homage to Bickerton”,1 seeking to map an “environment of consumption” onto his own brand. Bickerton, who included himself and his own namesake among the logoscapes of his late 1980s and early 1990s typological wall pieces, inspired Simons to do the same — resulting in a tension reflective of both Simons' personal breaking point between his tenure as a true independent designer and his eventual climb into the ranks of the corporate fashion machine, and the fashion system's own precarious relationship with endless consumption, ever-increasing pace, and an unmitigated need for financial return.

Tormented Portraits of the Hyperscape: Ashley Bickerton

If one artist best defines the Neuromancer-esque maximalist worldscape of the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was Barbadian-American visual artist Ashley Bickerton. The son of a Creole linguist, Bickerton’s fixation with language and the structures of power and symbolism within it began from early in his childhood. Described by some writers as an innovator of “Parodic Iconography,”2 Bickerton’s constant presence as an alien and ethnic outsider — growing up in Barbados and Hawaii — led to his insistence on art as its own invented language.

Bickerton quickly climbed the ranks of the blue-chip art world and joined Jeff Koons, Peter Halley and Meyer Vaisman in comprising their newly minted movement: Neo Geo. Short for “neo-geometric conceptualism”, Neo-Geo was an evolution of conceptual pop minimalism, and for Bickerton specifically, it soon manifested as sculptures ornamented by a sea of commercial logos, signatures, and monosyllabic text.

By the mid-1980s, this onslaught of new imagery was funneled into what Bickerton collectively termed self-portraits. These pieces, often three-dimensional sculpture boxes reminiscent of billboards or backlit advertisements, employed a massive range of corporate logos, signage, and advertisements. Tormented Self-Portrait: Susie at Arles, for instance, referenced the expressionistic self-portraits of Vincent Van Gogh, but instead substituted corporate logos in lieu of brush strokes.3 Paul Theroux, speaking on this work in particular, acknowledges that “Bickerton reminds us that we live with and are dominated by logos - yet another link we share with the tribal societies he references, where power symbols matter.”4

Subsequent works by Bickerton delved into the morality of logos, such as Abstract Painting for People 5 (Bad). These works, classifying logos into “good” (Freedom, Peace Sign, and Dolphins) and “bad” categorizations (Swastikas, Skulls, and Syphilis), elucidated a stark and obvious divide between what we consider morally righteous, venerable, and good — versus what we do not — within the new realm of hyper-capitalist, logo dominated realism.

Collectively, Bickerton’s expansion of the self-as-corporate object served as a visual cartography for the modern subject in the late 20th century hyper-sprawl; and 15 years later, Simons made his own brand the subject of such visual anxiety — taking Bickerton’s logofied self portraits and mapping them onto the body, wearer, and consumer itself.

Ray Gun Gothic: Espace Austerlitz

“It’s simply that he’s expressing, through clothes and through his own vision, the world’s vast flood of information.”

— Gap Press

Nearly a decade and a half after Bickerton’s works made the rounds through the 1980s New York downtown gallery scene, the red-hot Belgian designer Raf Simons would transform these same ideas into fashion in June of 2002.

Staging a presentation at Paris’ Espace Austerlitz — deep within the 13th arrondisement on the banks of the Seine — Simons filled an austere parking structure with masses of crushed empty cans perched upon wooden pallets. This shoddy aluminum mass served as a de facto stage, with each model brought out from behind a black curtain to stand upon it. A compacted, sculptural form of repurposed trash and waste, this John Chamberlain-like set piece correlated with the ready-made accessories adorning each model, an array of discarded objects like empty soda cans and crumpled cigarette packs.

As for the clothing itself, Simons specifically cited his desire for something “that could assert the brand’s identity and the identity of the person wearing it”.5 Rather than simply plastering Raf Simons on everything, he instead took Bickerton’s maximalist approach of using as many logos and graphic prints as possible, making the models wholly subsumed among them — functioning in parallel to Bickerton’s proxies of self, like his signature, name, and the names of others he knew. And like Bickerton’s self-portraits for the neon billboard age, Simons’ clothes opened a new dynamic for understanding between the consumer and producer, forging an uneasy union between the two.

Simons’ appropriation of Bickerton’s strategies wasn’t solely limited to typographic ones either — there were material similarities between many of Bickerton’s sculptural wall and assemblage pieces as well. Works like Bickerton’s Stratified Landscape series, replete with bungee cords, harnesses, mesh, nets, and all varieties of utility materials were mirrored in Simons’ material construction choices for garments. Bickerton’s pieces, conceived at the time as human survival chambers and ecological crime scenes6, were apocalyptic in nature: cold, forgotten totems and relics of consumer society and detritus — and the exact kind of aesthetic wasteland that served as a launching pad for Simons’ tension with a monstrous cycle of acceleration, waste, and unmitigated forward motion.

In total, Simons theatrical staging, garment construction and accessory design capitalized on what he described as a “contemporary society utterly steeped in consumption". By appropriating not only the logoscape of the post-modern world, but also the byproducts of a world increasingly disposable, Simons’ presentation was one of sheer optimism in this regard: “There are people who think this will destroy society, but there are also people — mainly among the younger generation — who see it positively, as a hint toward creating a new, flexible style.”7

Penthouse at the New Rose Hotel

Simons’ implementation of Bickerton’s strategies, while deft and aesthetically riveting, did not spare the designer from looming angst and fear around the state of the fashion system. 2003 was the beginning of the end for Belgian fashion in a sense, a year that began a furious descent spurred on by increasing globalization and pressure within the fashion system (culminating in Martin Margiela’s dramatic exit from his own label just six years later).

Thus, “Consumed” functions as a sort of meta-critique of the fashion system — not only a surface level acknowledgement and fusion with the corporatist, logofied aesthetic plane, but also a form of yielding alliance with the power of capital in the fashion system itself. Simons was no stranger to this, and told Mr High Fashion at the time:

“Of course, there's no chance of survival if creativity alone runs ahead unchecked, and I understand that being able to continue presenting collections at a consistent level is only possible because there is industrialization behind it. But at the same time, I still want a human element. Building a good relationship between these two things — that is both my challenge and my hope going forward.”

It comes as no surprise that Simons, only a few years later, would join the ranks of Jil Sander as creative director — beginning the designer's spiral through the megalithic world of fashion's legacy houses. But near the end of his tenure as a true indie designer, the collection still holds today a tension between artistry and commercial success, independence and capitalist integration, and ultimately, humanity and cold industrialization. Bickerton, the brilliant sculptor whose ideological groundwork was laid fifteen years prior, is the lexicon of understanding for this complicated and often misrepresented collection.

“I really dislike fashion being compared to art. A designer should not have that pretension.”

Declared by Martin Margiela in 1983, this striking claim by a designer many associate with the highest echelons of design and artistry belied the Belgian’s decades-long straddling of both the design and art worlds. While best known for his 1997 solo exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, two important group exhibitions predated this: Mode & Kunst, 1960-1990 in 1995 at the Palais des Beaux Arts Brussels and The Florence Biennial in 1996.

So, to better understand Margiela’s deliberately provocative positioning between art and design, we will examine these little discussed and documented shows.

The Golden Dustman

In Caroline Evans’ 1998 essay on Martin Margiela in the journal Fashion Theory, she frames the designer as what she calls “The Golden Dustman.” Taken from the Charles Dickens’ 1865 novel Our Mutual Friend, the moniker references the character Boffin, a former dustman who unexpectedly inherits his employer's fortune, a wealth built entirely on victorian London's discarded waste.1

This frame of the lavish dustman, or the industrial-era scavenger, is the perfect one to contextualize Margiela and his design practice, and crucial to later understanding his art practice. Like Boffin, Margiela also scoured the detritus and discarded materials of the fashion world, appropriating and re-contextualizing these as valuable. Evans writes: “Almost every kind of material, however abject, had a value in the nineteenth century. Margiela’s re-use of contemporary ‘rubbish’ such as broken shards and plastic carrier bags marks him out as a kind of ‘Golden Dustman’ of the fashion world, converting base material into gold.”

The idea of Margiela as “ragpicker” and scavenger is more importantly seated in the lineage of artists like Marcel Duchamp, who, rather than focusing on creating entirely new, additive works in the modernist sense, recontextualized existing objects to question their nature, aesthetic value, and ontology. Like Duchamp, Martin uplifted rubbish and discarded materials (like broken ceramic plates) into the haute-bourgeois gaze, testing and challenging the age-old Parisian fashion system in the process. This was seen not only in his clothing, but also in his choice of show venues: Café de la Gare (Spring-Summer 1989), a deserted lot in the 20th arrondissement (Spring-Summer 1990) and the sales depot of the Salvation Army (Autumn-Winter 1992/93), in which the crowd sat amongst an ocean of old furniture and used clothing. These neglected sites, much like the forgotten materials Margiela would reclaim into high fashion, were “activated” into spaces of high culture.

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Much like Icarus, whose name adorns his Spring-Summer 2006 collection, Raf Simons had soared to his utmost heights by the fall of 2005. Ten years of collections had come to pass, with Simons establishing himself so prominently within the fashion world — despite his lack of formal fashion training or degree — that legacy house Jil Sander had hired him to take over as creative director by May of 2005.1

While this marked an incredible milestone for both Simons and the second wave of Antwerp designers, it also marked the beginning of the end for Simons’ own independent label. By early 2007, most production had been outsourced to the far realms of the European Union, and Simons’ designs had become noticeably less inspired, or at the very least, distinctly less reminiscent of the punk and new wave that defined his momentous first ten years.

Meanwhile, Cathy Horyn, the great champion of the Belgians from across the Atlantic, profiled Simons for New York Times Style magazine’s fall 2005 issue, framed by a touching and beautiful portrait by fellow Flemish creative, photographer Rineke Dijkstra. Returning nearly two decades later to this piece, it serves as an important milestone in the career of Raf Simons, with Horyn's prescient voice now reading as a near eulogy for one of the great Belgian wunderkinds of menswear — a portrait, in hindsight, of a designer at his peak.

Raf

by Cathy Horyn

He’s changed the look of men’s wear without anybody noticing. And now, at Jil Sander, Raf Simons may be getting the spotlight he deserves.

The damp, persistent chill had ended, and by noon in Westende, a community of high-rise apartment buildings on the coast of Belgium, the temperature had risen to 65 degrees. At cafe tables along the boardwalk, middle-aged women opened the tops of their blouses, while down on the beach, pinkish bodies, plumped by their Lycra casings, lay between the canvas windbreaks.

Raf Simons leaned against the rail of his balcony. He had made the 90-minute drive from Antwerp, where he lives most of the year, in part to satisfy my curiosity to see his place at the beach.

When I first spoke to him, by telephone, more than a year ago, he had described the place as “crappy.” I don’t know why, but I liked him immediately. Westende was all he said it was. The Germans in World War II built bunkers there, and you can still see their ghastly windows in the dunes, but for the most part, the history of Westende is the history of the past 20 years: concrete pedestrian plazas with shops and restaurants where you can have a beer and eat shrimp croquettes while listening to Europop.

Simons’ apartment is on the top floor of a 1970’s building. It has a small living room and kitchenette, with two bedrooms and a bath on the second floor. There is a wood stove, a section of a black sectional sofa and one wall papered in a blue-cloud pattern, left over from the previous owner. Simons dragged the sectional piece out to the terrace and then opened a bag of Doritos and the liter of Diet Coke that he had brought with him in a plastic shopping sack. Later we went down to the boardwalk. It was crowded with young families and old people who, from the look of their clothes, were middle-class Belgians. At the end of the boardwalk we came to the dunes. “Will you be all right in those shoes?” Simons asked. I took off my sandals, and we crossed the dunes until we were on the flat, hard beach. The shimmer on the crowd: “He was scared to death of us.” Simons says he was especially unnerved by Branquinho, whom he used to see around Antwerp but never spoke to until that day she rode past the cafe.

“Veronique was one of those girls that I was just, you know, always attracted to but was very far away, and it was unreachable,” he told me. He asked Branquinho if she would be in an eight-millimeter movie he was making of his second collection, with just some friends hanging out in a house and Rizzo holding a cheap light; and it was on that night that Simons and Branquinho began their relationship, sharing a bed with Rizzo and another boy, because it was too late to drive back home.

a girl who was going off a lot — rock ‘n’ roll, a wild life. This was not his world. He was very intrigued by it, so he surrounded himself always with people who were connected to it. But it was never his world.” Yet it’s remarkable, as she points out, that Simons not only was able to connect with someone like Robbie Snelders but also could see merits that maybe weren’t evident in 1997, when Snelders, then 20, a scruffy kid in ripped army pants, a follower of the Sisters of Mercy, was recruited one day to be in a show. Today, Simons says that Snelders is one of the most important people in his company. “He knows how important it is to have a couple of people around me — ‘family’ is not the right word — who are very intimate,” Simons said. “At a certain point he said to me, ‘I know you don’t ask me, but as long as you want to work with me, I will be with you.’‘ Simons can be very persistent, even “possessive,” according to Linda Loppa, the head of the fashion department at the academy, who was a mentor to Simons. “He wants to know everything from the people around him.” Branquinho said: “He’s very demanding. It’s all about love as everything or nothing.” Yet the flip side to this devouring nature, Rizzo suggests, is a responsiveness to things that creates intense loyalties. Rizzo recalls the day he graduated, in 1993, from the academy:

“I had just done my final show, Gaultier was in the jury and afterward Raf came backstage. He was crying. I was kind of comforting him. Raf is a very emotional person. He gets touched really deeply by things. He said to me: What you did was really amazing. So fantastic, and I want to be part of this world.’ And I said, ‘You will be part of this world.” But, as Rizzo says, Simons’s hammering actually betrays a virtue: “What you felt from Raf was that he was a very social guy but wasn’t someone who got very close to a lot of people, and when he really liked someone he wanted to go to the bottom of it. He has a general interest in people. In that sense he was very into knowing everything.”

Simons doesn’t present his first collections for Jil Sander until early next year. But while the chance to do both men’s and women’s clothes is exciting and will bring him some long-overdue recognition as well as financial security after years of running his own company rather close to the bone (often with as few as three people), it will not change his basic values and ideas. I once asked him if it bothered him that he wasn’t better known. He answered: “I have done what I believed in. So what is recognition? For me, recognition is about people you have a relation with. Somewhere, in some city in America, someone is wearing my clothes, and I’m happy with that.”

Simons, who has a three-year contract with Sander, is also approaching the job — and his relationship with Prada’s chief executive, Patrizio Bertelli - with the attitude of someone who has nothing to lose; unlike Sander and Helmut Lang, he has not sold his name. “People are not going to judge my work and my label and me as a person if it’s not going to work out,” he said. “And that makes it more convincing for me to go for it.” But it’s pointless to speculate about whether he’ll get along with Bertelli, who manages, it seems, to tick off everybody, including his wife, the designer Miuccia Prada; once, in a product meeting with her, he reportedly said that he would urinate on her handbags. Simons says that his own dealıngs with Bertelli have been cordial, but he observed: “I think if he would listen a little bit more, or a little longer, it would be a good difference for him and the people who work with him. I can’t complain, because when I was there he really took his time. But I feel it more with the other people in the room. Those people are all there to help him.”

Snelders, though, worries for Simons. He worries that the things that have so far been unimportant to Simons will find a way of entering his small, protective world — maybe change it altogether. “It sounds scary, but he needs to be left alone,” Snelders told me. “He spends way too much time on the phone doing interviews, daft stuff. The phone is constantly ringing, like, for nothing. He needs a new mobile phone.” The central question about Simons, and the one that has gone unanswered, is: How did he do it? How was someone without training or signs of genius able to project such a remarkably accurate portrait of urban youth? And not only that, but how was he able to give the idea by his choice of music and use of large public spaces that youth was also a monumental event?

Simons was 25 when he settled in Antwerp, too old to get lost in the club scene that had influenced many of his contemporaries. Surrounding himself with people like Snelders certainly helped. (In that sense, Simons, for all his calculated distancing from the fashion world, is a seductive personality — and he knows it.) But this doesn’t explain everything. Although a number of writers have ascribed Simons’ powers to intellect, he actually embodies a different quality. He looks at everything very simply and directly. This was the quality that Lionel Trilling identified in George Orwell, and that he celebrated in his introduction to Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia.”

Trilling argued that Orwell was able to see the Spanish Civil War for what it was by virtue of not being a genius. “We admire geniuses, we love them, but they discourage us,” he wrote. “They are great concentrations of intellect and emotion, we feel that they have soaked up all the available power, monopolizing it and leaving none for us. We feel that it we cannot be as they, we can be nothing.” In fashion, Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano are geniuses, but they don’t communicate the sense, as Simons does, that we can understand our world just by looking at it. We feel we have to be as smart and cool as they are. Simons, the coolest of designers, tells us differently.

When I saw Simons in Vienna, I mentioned that I had seen his shows described as many things — dark, aggressive - but never romantic. Though a romantic is surely what he is. For a moment there was a look of surprise in his pale blue eyes, and then he said: “Because very few people go into the heart of things.

They look at the surface, but I hunger for an ideal world always. Before I came to the city, I had also had the feeling that I grew up in an ideal world. My mom and my dad, what they have together is amazing. Then there’s my village, with the grass fields and the woods and the animals.” This has been the perspective all along, from the eight-millimeter movie through to the recent collections — of someone looking at contemporary life from the vantage of his own humble background and wanting to make it not merely right but better. Not many designers would have the instinct to call a collection History of the World, as Simons did in July 2004, and have the models descend on a pair of huge escalators or print on their invitation the names of people and things that had changed the modern world, as if to suggest that fashion — or any one of us — could do the same. How many people would make such a moral claim in a cynical age?

This summer, as I stood with Michael Roberts, the fashion editor of The New Yorker, outside Galliano’s men’s show, he recalled a collection that Simons had presented in 1998, on a series of concrete overpasses that were reflected, like the surrounding Paris neighborhood, in a huge futuristic silver ball.2 The show opened with “Space Oddity,” by David Bowie, and at first, Roberts said, the audience didn’t know where to direct its attention. “We were all sitting there, waiting and wondering, Where are the models going to come from?” he said. “I’m looking through the haze of this warm summer evening, and then, in the dıstance, about three overpasses away, I see this line of boys in black suits walking along, like union workers, one after the other. It dawned on me that this was the show. Then they disappeared and came along the nearer overpass. It was just unbelievable. So eerie and so beautiful.”

I said that in looking back at all of Simons’s shows, it seemed to me that they didn’t date. The clothes from the 90’s still looked relevant today. Roberts agreed. I wondered how that was possible. “I don’t know,” he said. He thought for a moment as we watched people file into the Galliano show, which would feature a New Orleans-style band and many orange-robed Hare Krishnas. Finally, Roberts said, nodding, “Because he was right, and we were all looking away.”

END

Takahiro Miyashita has always been a designer and man of few words — few interviews, if any, exist, and even fewer photos of the designer circulate. Partially rectifying this dearth is smart magazine’s 2005 special issue on Number (N)ine, crucially containing 10 interview and talking sessions between the designer and his most trusted and important collaborators.

Below are three of the most relevant discussion and talking sessions, translated from their original Japanese: Tsuyoshi Noguchi, the label’s longtime runway stylist, Yoshio Wakatsuki, the show director in charge of staging and theatrics for runway presentations, and Hideo Uchiyama, the incredible jewelry designer of Magical Design, who helped Miyashita realize the many skull-centric jewelry iterations the brand has long been associated with.

Takahiro Miyashita × Tsuyoshi Noguchi

Stylist Tsuyoshi Noguchi, who has followed Number (N)ine since its launch and also handles the styling for its shows, talks about the label and Miyashita-san.

Text: Keisuke Kusakari

Noguchi-san, you’ve been following Number (N)ine since its launch, right?

Tsuyoshi Noguchi (N): Yeah. Still the same now, but I thought, “This guy’s a real clothing obsessive” (laughs). Usually, people only focus on obvious design points, right? But Miyashita is the opposite — he’s meticulous about fabrics, details, and everything.

When Number (N)ine started, aside from brands like A Bathing Ape, Japanese domestic menswear was in a slump. In that sense, Miyashita’s presence was a big factor in revitalizing menswear. After that, brands started popping up all over, and I think he influenced other creators too.

Takahiro Miyashita (M): What I admire about Noguchi-san is that he comes to check even young designers’ work. I was the same way at first, and he always gives proper feedback.

N: But he only goes if something catches his eye. You can’t see everything—there’s only one body, right? So something must have sparked interest.

M: I’m glad something caught your eye (laughs).

Noguchi-san is like a close ally to you?

M: Yeah. When we decided to hold the first show, Noguchi-san pushed hard and made it happen. Among stylists, I think he’s the best. His way of giving advice is different from others.

N: No curveballs (laughs).

M: He tells it straight, good or bad (wry laugh). But most of the time, when I think about it, he’s right. Recently, one comment that really resonated with me was: “Don’t worry about the newspapers or media.” A few seasons ago, good things were written about me, but I was caring too much about other people’s opinions.

N: Whether good or bad, as long as people are talking, that’s the charm. But everyone’s perspective is different, so don’t overthink it. More importantly, the customers buying the clothes are the most important.

M: Exactly. That one comment really reinforced me. Being with Noguchi-san is such a learning experience. At first, I tell him, “I want to do this,” and he just goes “Hmm” like he’s not listening (laughs). The scary thing is that he doesn’t say anything until the clothes are finished.

N: Making the clothes is your main job.

M: So I guess that’s Noguchi-san’s method — he doesn’t say yes or no until he sees the finished piece. I explain every little detail, but he just completely zones out (wry laugh).

N: No, I’m listening (laughs). Then I build an image in my head. When the work is done, I can’t know if it matches or misses your vision, right? So sometimes I think, “Ah, so that’s what he came up with.”

You tell Noguchi-san the theme from the beginning?

M: Yeah, I say something like, “This is the feel I want.” I think it’s better to communicate early, and I make sure he knows what I want to do.

N: Then everyone starts imagining things.

M: Though among the four, only Tomita-san sometimes imagines something slightly different (laughs).

So even in a team, some people envision different things (laughs).

Does Noguchi-san offer suggestions while styling?

N: Our job is to figure out how to “cook” the clothes that come up. We don’t interfere with their creation.

M: That’s why he’s a true stylist. People like Noguchi-san are rare nowadays. Even if I say, “That styling was great,” he usually just says, “Really?” and moves on (laughs). He’s probably already focused on the next project, but I think, “You already forgot that?” (laughs).

N: When the book comes out, I sometimes think, “I wish I’d done this differently.” Of course, I try to do my best each time, but when you see the actual bound book, regrets happen. It’s a repeated cycle.

M: Same for me. There’s always something left unfinished, so there’s always a next time.

Any recent show episodes?

M: Noguchi-san is really fast after seeing the clothes. He picks a piece as the focus and builds a whole look around it. Capturing the key item is quick. I communicate my wishes, and that collaboration is fun.

N: Teamwork is important.

M: But there’s always some accident or mistake in the show, right? We’re human, after all—nothing is perfect.

N: Right. We try our best, but a show is live.

Do you feel a difference between showing collections in Tokyo and Paris?

M: Hard to summarize, but completely different.

N: The audience’s eyes are different. Tokyo Collection is mainly insiders and customers saying, “Ah, that was good.”

M: It might sound rude to people working hard in Tokyo, but it’s just a festival. So I think anyone with the chance should go to Paris. Going outside Japan is important.

N: If you’re putting on a show, it’s better to compete where people are serious about fashion.

M: But for the first Paris collection, I was scared, right? (laughs)

N: It was more interesting the first time in Tokyo (laughs). People would be like, “Where’s Miyashita?” and he’d disappear somewhere. Even when I said, “Let’s eat,” he’d go, “I can’t swallow” (laughs).

M: Yeah, without Noguchi-san back then, the show wouldn’t have happened. Compared to before, I feel I’ve grown mentally.

N: Yeah, the first Paris show was much easier.

Now it seems teamwork is perfect?

M: Noguchi-san is like a big brother even outside work. He knows my strengths and weaknesses, which is scary (laughs).

N: He has ups and downs; very human (laughs).

M: He really knows me when I’m down (wry laugh). In any case, I want to keep doing shows with the four of us until someone dies. The fastest will probably be Tomita-san (laughs).

N: He might live surprisingly long, though, even while senile (laughs).

M: Maybe I or Noguchi-san will go first (laughs). But looking back, my real mentor was Shimizu-san at Nepenthes. After starting the brand, Noguchi-san taught me so much — life philosophy, perspective, ways of thinking…

N: Not that dramatic though (wry laugh).

You two have greatly influenced Miyashita-san’s life?

M: Yeah, I’ve been influenced in many ways. Shimizu-san and Noguchi-san are totally different, but from my perspective, they share common traits — level of interestingness (laughs). Both are like big brothers. Actually, Shimizu-san is more like a father (laughs).

N: Then Tomita-san?

M: He’s like a grandfather (laughs).

N: Grandpa!? Good to hear he’s still around (laughs).

Takahiro Miyashita × Yoshio Wakatsuki

Yoshio Wakatsuki, a director who has worked on numerous fashion shows, shares his perspective on the reality of Number (N)ine from the viewpoint of a show director.

Text: Keisuke Kusakari

Number (N)INE’s history has been built alongside you, Wakatsuki-san?

Takahiro Miyashita (M): The show is now in its seventh year, and it’s an honor to work with Wakatsuki-san. Honestly, I don’t think I could have done it with anyone else.

You place complete trust in him as a director?

M: Yes, absolutely. The other day, I saw a show Wakatsuki-san directed for another brand for the first time, and I was truly moved. Afterwards, we went to a café together, and I just thought, “Am I really working with someone this incredible?” I was speechless. Each brand uses his brain differently; everything he does is completely unique.

Yoshio Wakatsuki (W): People often ask me, “How can you switch your mindset so quickly?” I think everyone in this industry is like that. If you kept doing the same thing for different brands, it could even affect your career survival (laughs).

M: But there’s something there, surely (laughs). Some secret he’s keeping (laughs).

Conversely, what do you see as Miyashita-san’s appeal as a designer?

W: Let’s say someone wears Number (N)ine. If Wakatsuki-san thinks the coordination is off, he’ll seriously say, “Don’t wear it like that!” (laughs). Sure, “wear what you want” is valid, but he’s incredibly passionate about clothing and proud of his work. People with strong convictions are often more interesting to work with. If you don’t think, “I’m cool!” you can’t be a fashion designer.

But doesn’t it bother him when things don’t go his way?

W: Sure. But if you get stuck worrying alongside the designer, nothing progresses. That’s why preparation is key — you prevent regret before the clothes are finished. Close communication between director and designer is part of that.

At what point do you see the clothes when preparing a show?

W: Usually, I avoid looking during coordination. But I remember once I was relaxing at home and got a call: “All the coordination is done, come see it.” I asked, “Now?” He said, “If possible, come immediately” (laughs). That kind of dedication is impressive. It feels better than, “It’s ready, but come tomorrow.” Even as an outsider, I feel accepted, which is fun.

M: I’m completely letting him in, though (laughs).

W: Not exactly. You share the same “meal” metaphorically, but don’t live under the same roof. If he says he needs soy sauce, I want to be close enough to provide it (laughs). People ask me if I’ll do shows for overseas designers, but due to time differences and communication gaps, it rarely works. I’d rather go global with talented Japanese people.

You had talked about showing at Paris Fashion Week?

M: I had been considering it, but the push came from Wakatsuki-san and Noguchi-san. We were waiting for the right timing, and their words, “Let’s go to Paris,” were decisive.

W: I thought, otherwise, this brand could just fade as a passing trend. I was convinced that showing to the world would make it much more interesting. In the end, it’s curiosity and a bit of courage.

M: Yes. But I really think going there was the right choice (reflective).

You’ll continue doing shows with Wakatsuki-san?

M: I don’t want to work with anyone else. If it weren’t him, I’d stop the show.

W: Then he might say, “I found someone else” (laughs).

M: That won’t happen (laughs). Maybe it’s unfair to other directors, but there’s no one like Wakatsuki-san.

Miyashita-san seems the type to never change once he chooses someone?

M: That’s basically true. Once I sync with someone, we stay together. It’s also my weakness — I rely too much on Wakatsuki-san.

What has Miyashita-san learned from Wakatsuki-san?

M: Too much to list, but in short: life lessons. How to be a cool adult. When I release a new collection, I always think, “I’ve done my coolest work yet.” But during creation, my feelings waver — moments when I might fall into the dark side. Wakatsuki-san never wavers; he’s always steadfast in his work. Watching that closely makes me want to become that kind of adult as soon as possible.

W: You can’t have people like Miyashita-kun missing in fashion. Someone completely obsessed with clothes, even if they’re bad with money (laughs). But someone focused on a goal without seeing the surroundings — isn’t that cool?

M: I think that’s exactly the kind of “cool adult” he’s talking about.

Takahiro Miyashita ✕ Hideo Uchiyama

Text: Keisuke Kusakari

Hideo Uchiyama helms Magical Design, which has released a series of collaborative accessories with Number (N)ine. This season the two join back up for more new designs.

How did your collaboration start?

Takahiro Miyashita (M): Honestly, I just fell in love with the jewelry Uchiyama was making. We’d been doing skull motifs at Number (N)INE for a long time, and with skulls, the face really matters, right? Uchiyama is amazing at illustration—his skulls are nearly perfect. I saw dozens of his works and every single one impressed me.

Hideo Uchiyama (U): Thank you. I really put care into the craftsmanship, so I’m glad Miyashita-san liked them.

M: Uchiyama-san was kind of a famous figure, with a senior in between us, so at first I didn’t dare ask him to collaborate. But I really wanted to, so I went to talk to him, and he gladly accepted.

The senior you mentioned, was that from school?

M: No, from when we used to hang out in Shibuya and Harajuku (laughs). So we’d known of each other for a long time.

Did your impression of him change after working together?

M: I think he’s softened a bit. He treats me seriously and works with me, which he wouldn’t have done back in the day (laughs).

U: Not really (laughs). I don’t feel like I’ve changed.

M: No, I think you have. Back then, everyone was kind of scary, or kind but intimidating—it was hard to tell. I’m just really happy we can work together now.

Does Uchiyama-san handle all of Number (N)INE’s jewelry?

M: Not everything. The collaboration is kind of a double-name with Magical Design. These pieces are mostly separate from the main collections, so I enjoy watching from afar. I give the idea, and Uchiyama starts drawing immediately.

U: We expand the concept together, and finish it when we’re both satisfied. Miyashita-san has a sense I don’t have—he’s very adventurous, but balances it perfectly. I tend to make things more orthodox, but he takes risks in just the right way.

M: Yeah, it’s basically Uchiyama-san’s work, but what’s amazing is how fast he can turn my ideas into reality. He understands instantly and executes immediately.

U: I can’t afford to be slow and upset him (laughs).

M: Absolutely not (laughs). I could never say that to a senior like him.

Do you also look at Number (N)INE clothing closely?

U: Yes. I admire how he takes inspiration from past eras, reinterprets it in a modern way, and creates with a forward-looking vision. I want to match that creativity with the accessories I make. Honestly, sometimes I think, “Am I really worthy?” (laughs).

M: Absolutely you are. And I hope you keep doing it!

Do new accessory ideas come constantly?

M: I think Uchiyama-san never runs out of ideas. In meetings, he draws with so much joy—you can tell he doesn’t see it as work (laughs).

U: Well… I enjoy it, and Miyashita-san never criticizes my ideas, so it makes me happy.

M: Right. I always say, “This is cool!” and let him run with it.

U: Exactly—it motivates me a lot (laughs).

M: We both love skulls, so the designs keep coming naturally. People might say they look similar, but we insist on our own style.

U: It’s like how women get excited about a difference in diamond carat size.

M: Exactly. We feel like we need skulls as part of our daily lives (laughs).

U: Skulls are one of the most complete designs—they’re an intricate part of the human body and their shape is largely fixed.

Will you continue creating skull-based pieces?

M: Yes. We’ve done four seasons already, and this time especially, there were a lot.

U: We did nine pieces this season.

M: Nine sounds simple, but these are dense, detailed designs.

This is for next Spring/Summer?

M: Yes—large, intricate accessories. They’re delicate yet strong; the two qualities coexist. There are hidden gimmicks, but it’s not tacky… you’ll just have to see (laughs).

One of the most remarkable decade-long outputs in contemporary fashion is Takahiro Miyashita’s work under his self-styled label, Number (N)ine. While he began releasing collections in the mid-1990s, Miyashita’s ascent truly began with his debut at Tokyo Fashion Week with his Autumn-Winter 2000/01 collection, The Redisun.

Miyashita, who had been a long-time buyer at the influential legacy fashion business Nepenthes, launched Number (N)ine in 1996. Focused primarily on menswear, his early collections drew heavily from the streetwear signatures of Ura-Harajuku, but by the mid-2000s his vision shifted toward a grungier, moodier worldview, reflecting his longstanding fascination with grunge, Americana, and cultural figures such as Kurt Cobain, Johnny Cash, and Andy Kaufman. This evolution was not only aesthetic but also conceptual, as Miyashita increasingly approached clothing as an extension of his world, heavily influenced by mood, music, and the endless quest for personal expression.

By 2004, Miyashita had become a fulcrum of Tokyo Fashion Week, yet he soon turned his gaze abroad, debuting in Paris with his Autumn-Winter 2004/05 collection, Give Peace a Chance. From the outset, Miyashita’s shows were highly collaborative endeavors, with footwear crafted in partnership with master shoemaker Toshinosuke Takegahara, hair and makeup engineered by Futa Sato, and accessories made in collaboration with Hideo Uchiyama of Magical Design. Longtime models like Jun became important muses, embodying the label’s aesthetic across seasons and continents.

The following guide represents a months-long effort to bring together disparate materials into one comprehensive entity: scans of every collection, press reviews, and commentary, and reflections and notes on the collections by Miyashita himself. Collectively, it serves as a living, breathing map of Number (N)ine, chronicling not only the garments and their context but also the philosophies, personalities, and shows that made Number (N)ine one of Japan’s most influential fashion entities of the 2000s.

Seasons:

Tokyo

• Autumn-Winter 2000/01

• Spring-Summer 2001

• Autumn-Winter 2001/02

• Spring-Summer 2002

• Autumn-Winter 2002/03

• Spring-Summer 2003 & Autumn-Winter 2003/04

• Spring-Summer 2004

Paris

• Autumn-Winter 2004/05

• Spring-Summer 2005

• Autumn-Winter 2005/06

• Spring-Summer 2006

• Autumn-Winter 2006/07

• Spring-Summer 2007

• Autumn-Winter 2007/08

• Spring-Summer 2008

• Autumn-Winter 2008/09

• Spring-Summer 2009

• Autumn-Winter 2009/10

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A specter is haunting fashion — the specter of Ryuichiro Shimazaki.

Like many specters and ghosts, this haunting is also the product of neglect. Shimazaki, one of the greatest menswear designers of 1990s Japan, receives little to no recognition for his significant contributions to Japanese fashion design. A master of outerwear and knitwear, Shimazaki, primarily through his namesake line, Ryuichiro Shimazaki Homme, channelled eclectic, dark, and somewhat controversial themes throughout his five-year run between 1996 and 2001.

One potential remedy to begin exorcising this is to look at a special feature from Mr High Fashion, October 1998, which documented the designer’s greatest collection: Autumn-Winter 1998/99. The following is a full translation of the one-page report along with high-resolution scans of both the feature and the collection itself published later in the issue.

003 STAGE II

AUTUMN AND WINTER 98/99

RYUICHIRO SHIMAZAKI

It began with the search for a space that resembled a ruin.

Horror. An abandoned castle. Analog. Dark.

In order to fulfill the entirety of Ryuichiro Shimazaki’s vision, a warehouse was located and, within a matter of hours, transformed into a venue for the collection. Surrounded by a high atrium ceiling, rusted iron plates, and crumbling concrete, the space was filled with slightly damp, cold air— all intensified by the rain that had begun to fall outside.

Known also as the designer behind Beige Shop, Ryuichiro Shimazaki presents RYUICHIRO SHIMAZAKI as his own independent menswear brand.

The A3-sized poster sent out as an invitation for the collection featured an illustration in an unmistakably haunted-house, horror style, the kind of sign you might see outside a ghost attraction or amusement park. Now in its second season as an independent collection, this season’s theme was “Horror,” and particularly inspired by the novel Frankenstein.

Shimazaki explains that he wanted to link the story of something created by human hands transforming into something monstrous, along with contemporary ideas of cloned humans and genetic experimentation, expressing a sense of crisis toward the relentless advance of civilization.

The garments themselves incorporated numerous patchwork-like seams and panel switches, creating shifts in silhouette. Dark colors—black, navy, gray, olive— reinforced the underground atmosphere of the show.

While searching for a venue evocative of a wasteland, he found Daito Warehouse in Akihabara. Its wide, concrete-exposed interior perfectly matched the horror image he had envisioned. In stark contrast to the surrounding electric town near the station, the warehouse stood in a desolate area beneath elevated tracks—tracks that were already out of service. The warehouse itself was scheduled for demolition soon.

On the day of the show, light rain began falling in the afternoon, normally unfortunate weather. But for this collection, the designer welcomed the rain as an unexpected gift. To preserve the raw atmosphere of the space, the setup was minimal: only a few spotlights and chairs for the audience.

As it was still somewhat chilly, pocket warmers were prepared at reception for guests.

At the back of the warehouse were fitting rooms and waiting areas for models and staff. In the unusually spacious backstage—impossible in a conventional show venue—models, finished with pale, scar-and-stitch-inspired makeup, relaxed in an almost mundane way: eating, chatting, and listening to CDs. The contrast between their eerie appearance and their casual behavior created a strange, quietly surreal scene.

The Collection

One would be hard pressed to find two figures in Japan’s fashion publishing world that loom larger—and remain more influential—than Shoichi Aoki (青木正一) and Noriko Kojima (小島規子). Beginning with STREET magazine in 1985, the pair published the lion’s share of the country’s most influential, hip, and important fashion periodicals, and soon expanded into myriad special issues and offshoot publications such as New Generation Designers, Contemporary Fashion, TUNE, and FRUiTS.　

Covering an eclectic gamut of street style, youth culture, and high fashion, Aoki and Kojima, in conjunction with luminary fashion critic Takeji Hirakawa (平川武治), came to define the late 1980s and 1990s world of fashion publications, captured in its signature tungsten-coated, crisp flash photography, and augmented by playful, cutting-edge graphic design and evocative, cyber-inflected criticism.

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Ann Demeulemeester was at her peak in 2006. Having run her own independent, namesake label since 1985, the Belgian designer had redefined not only Victorian-inspired, Neo-Renaissance extravagance, but also the dark, feminine-inflected vision of what men’s clothing, designed by women, could and should look like. 2006 was also two decades, and nearly forty collections, from the date Demeulemeester (born Ann Verhelst) debuted at Paris Fashion Week with her Autumn-Winter 1987/88 collection.

Transcribing this legacy was New York Times style critic Cathy Horyn, a longtime champion and keen observer of the Belgians from afar; her 2006 feature in the New York Times Style Magazine, “Ann of Antwerp,” was a significant American media profile for the designer, and featured a striking portrait from the incredible German photographic artist Thomas Struth. Weaving between Demeulemeester, her partner and label co-founder Patrick Robyn, their son Victor, and their love of Le Corbusier, Jim Dine, and Patti Smith, Horyn’s article remains a fascinating and important mid-oughts look into the home life and world of Ann Demeulemeester.

Ann of Antwerp

The Dark Queen of Belgian Fashion Casts a Long Shadow Over the Fall Collections. Cathy Horyn Pays Tribute to Ann Demeulemeester

The setting of the Le Corbusier house where the designer Ann Demeulemeester lives and works in Antwerp reflects her place in the fashion world. It stands at the edge of a treeless lot near a highway overpass, isolated both aesthetically and physically from the apartment blocks in the southern part of this Flemish city. The original owner of the house, built in 1926, had hoped to establish a Modernist community, if only to counter the local gingerbread, but it never came. What came instead was a world war and senseless urban planning. In 1985, her career not yet begun, Demeulemeester and her husband, Patrick Robyn, who was trying to establish himself as a photographer, bought Belgium’s only Le Corbusier house and started to restore it. Now, except to travel to their country home, 30 minutes away, they rarely leave Antwerp.

“I’m not confused about what’s happening in fashion, because I follow my direction and go,” Demeulemeester says one afternoon at her dining table. She has laid out plates of salad and cold tuna and opened a bottle of wine. She is 47, and the lines of her face have begun to set in, but it is still a fascinating face to look at, pale and vigilant and framed by dirty-blond hair. Victor Robyn, the couple’s only child, an art student in Brussels, has dropped by and left with friends. When Victor was 3, his parents built a studio next door, with offices and a private entrance for the family, so that Demeulemeester wouldn’t have to feel like she was actually leaving her son to go to work. Today the family compound consists of four buildings. Although the house is by no means a shrine to its architect, Demeulemeester and Robyn are eager to play host to Le Corbusier’s ideas. There are the original paint colors — chocolate, azure and cream for the main room. There are simple light fixtures and cool, black-tiled floors. There is, as well, the grid of windows facing a small walled garden. Demeulemeester seems oblivious to the traffic beyond the open windows. She says she doesn’t pay attention to other designers’ work: “I never study what others are doing because it doesn’t help me.”

This seems strange. At a moment when many designers, along with architects, star chefs and art dealers, feel driven to be everywhere in the world - in China, at the latest art fair, opening a hotel in Dubai — Demeulemeester is interested in only her world.

Her influence is pervasive this season. Among those designers like Marc Jacobs and Miuccia Prada whose power we readily trust, if only because they more easily monopolize one’s attention, there was a strong sense in their clothes of Demeulemeester’s proportions, her asymmetrical cuts, her blunt, northern femininity. Discharging their ladylike tweeds and presumably the women in them, designers now spoke of “urban females” and “the warrior woman,” ignoring, as Sarah Mower of Vogue pointed out, that this has been Demeulemeester’s single-minded view tor 20 years.

Demeulemeester says she was unaware of her influence until a journalist mentioned it, and then, even in the collections where it seemed most obvious, like Marc by Marc Jacobs, it wasn’t evident to her. “When I looked at the clothes, I didn’t see my thing,” she says. She is at least sensitive to the prevailing rhetoric. “I hate when people suddenly say, And now we are going to do the glamorous woman, now we’re going to do the strong woman,” she says, studying me. “Sorry, I am a strong woman. And I go for it. I don’t have to play this game.”

Demeulemeester and the other Belgian designers of the late 1980’s, among them Martin Margiela and Dries Van Noten, made their reputations by opposing and even mocking the barbarism of the decade — none more so than Margiela, who made clothes from recycled garments and plastic trash bags and set himself up as a virtual designer, remote and unanswerable, before the term was fully understood.

It may be that in the current climate of opportunism, with its what-do-I-get-out-of-this attitude, people again want clothes of substance and surprise. Clearly Demeulemeester thinks so. “I don’t think women can take superficiality much longer,” she says. “They want a soul again. I’ve always worked with this emotion. That’s why people are turning toward me, I think.”

Demeulemeester graduated from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1981, the same year that Rei Kawakubo showed her first Comme des Garçons collection in Paris. Kawakubo, with her almost brutal cutting techniques, proposed that women were strong and self-determined. Demeulemeester, born a generation later, just assumed that they were. Both her father and her grandfather earned their living drying chicory for the coffee market, and when she was 16, she met Robyn, a local boy who already had leanings to become an artist. Demeulemeester says the only time fashion entered her consciousness in her girlhood was when she made drawings of classical portraits; she noticed the relationship between the subject and his clothes.

At the academy, she says, she felt like an outsider “because I was not fashionable in the eyes of the others.” Though Belgium produced children’s clothes and fine tailoring, it had no fashion identity, and of the two old women who taught Demeulemeester pattern making, one sewed her own clothes and the other was extremely rigid. She believed that you should not put white and black in the same outfit. “That was my big discussion with her,” Demeulemeester says, smiling.

“And she was, like: ‘Ann, you can’t use white. It’s not chic. Use off-white. Chanel used off-white.’ Chanel was her ideal. So I had a big fight with her. All these things were happening, punk in London, and she was living in her Chanel, off-white world.”

“The Antwerp Six” was a media appellation born in London in the late 1980’s to help manage foreign-sounding Flemish names. In reality there was little communal spirit in the group. “Everybody was doing his thing,” Demeulemeester says. “We weren’t doing things together.” By the early 90’s, the Belgians had established themselves as devout individualists at the Paris shows, with Demeulemeester projecting a militant, and often tender, modernism. Her women looked cool and tough, as if they had just finished a gig in Rotterdam. Though she has always pursued experimental cuts and fabrics, like the papery leather she used this past spring for a stunning white shift, her clothes follow a narrative, which was a problem in the 90’s, when designers fell under one extreme influence after another. “I had the impression, around 1995, that all of a sudden the weather changed,” Demeulemeester says. “It was all about these big houses. Gucci had started. For me, it was the opposite of freedom. I couldn’t understand.”

Demeulemeester wants to show me her studio, and we head upstairs, which, like the rest of the house, has black-tiled floors and wall colors so deeply pigmented that they resemble velvet. We follow a passage into the adjoining building and enter a large white studio with a copy of Man Ray’s hanger mobile. Few independent designers have the luxury of such space. In the mid-90’s, Demeulemeester asked Anne Chapelle, an acquaintance and businesswoman, to run her company, and, as Demeulemeester says, Chapelle restructured the business “as a little multinational.” Later they created a holding company that today includes the rising Belgian star Haider Ackermann.

We pull out photographs taken by Robyn of early collections, beautiful portfolios produced despite the fact that the couple had little money. Demeulemeester is often associated with Patti Smith, but to my mind her clothes have never resonated more emotionally than when she collaborated with the artist Jim Dine. “I saw his photos in a gallery, and it was one of those moments that you don’t have often,” she explains.

“I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. I felt sick. I came home and wrote him a letter. I had to do it. And four or five days later, he was sitting here in my studio and saying, ‘O.K., we’re going to work together.

Can you imagine?” The result was exquisite asymmetrical dresses with silvery-gray photo prints of birds of prey.

For fall, as other designers were paying homage to her past work, Demeulemeester explored drapery, creating wrapped dresses that lent mystery to her tailoring. She has her store in Antwerp, which each week sends hard-to-find pieces to clients in New York, and I know women who have as much Demeulemeester stashed in their closets — skinny T-shirts, boyish black boots — as they do Prada. She recently expanded her men’s collection and would like to do a perfume.

“I never organize or plan things,” she says. “I go step by step. Maybe it’s safe like this, I don’t know.” Demeulemeester smiles, coyly, and you know that this thought doesn’t trouble her in the least. She says: “I just wait because I think people will find me. And I’m not the kind of person who will knock on somebody’s door. I wait. If they’re good for me, they will come towards me.”

Bonus: Antwerp Style Map

1. MoMu

   If there’s a patron saint of Belgian fashion, it’s Linda Loppa, who, as the head of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts’ fashion department, indoctrinates generations of aspiring Margielas. Loppa is also the director of ModeMuseum, or MoMu, the city’s fashion museum, where a retrospective on Yohji Yamamoto offered the chance to try on (alas, not to take home) some past showstoppers.

   Nationalestraat 28; 011 32 3 470 2770.

2. Veronique Branquinho

   This designer is part of Antwerp’s second fashion wave, which includes A.F.

   Vandevorst, Jurgi Persoons and Raf Simons (also her former boyfriend). In 2003

   Branquinho opened her own shop, where you can find her sober collections for women and men, as well as Complice, her new so-called partner look, with male and female versions of the same outfit.

   Nationalestraat 73; 011 32 3 233 6616.

3. Louis

   Before many designers could afford to pay rent on their studios, Louis was the first to sell their clothes. The current owner, Marjan Eggers, has expanded with labels like Balenciaga and Lanvin. But it’s still the only place in Antwerp to find Raf Simons’s cool men’s wear. After outfitting yourself, retreat to Eggers’s favorite cafe, Witzli Poetzli on Blauwmoezelstraat.

   Lombardenstraat 2; 011 32 3 232 9872.

4. Walter

   This shop is a fashion fun house stocked with Walter van Beirendonck’s naughty T-shirts and pretty frocks by his partner, Dirk van Saene, as well as a rotating selection of clothes and accessories by young designers that are displayed, say, in an in-store log cabin or on a dry-cleaner’s rack. Van Beirendonck’s

   cheerful uniforms can be seen on the gardeners at his favorite hideaway: the botanical gardens on Leopoldstraat.

   Sint-Antoniusstraat 12; 011 32 3 213 2644.

5. Het Modepaleis

   Dries van Noten’s shop, in a grand turn-of-the-century department store, is still referred to by its original name. Visit Van Noten’s favorite painting, Jean Fouquet’s

   “Madonna With Seraphim and Cherubim” (below), at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, down the street. This weirdly vibrant, startlingly modern 15th-century portrait is a window onto the designer’s sensibility.

   Nationalestraat 16; 011 32 3 470 2510.

6. Ann Demeulemeester

   This designer doesn’t have customers; she has disciples, and her shop is a fitting altar. She is happy to point you to the best Belgian chocolate (Sweertvaegher, on Schuttershofstraat) and to furniture shopping (the Kloosterstraat). But she likes to send visitors to Rubenshuis (Wapper 9-11), the former home of the Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens.

   Verlatstraat 38; 011 32 3 216 0133.

7. Crocodillo

   Eddy Michiels owns what may be the world’s best shoe store. Founded in 1983, Coccodrillo outgrew its original footprintand expanded to a second floor to accommodate its myriad brands, like A. F. Vandevorst and Veronique Branquinho.

   (This may also be a good place to find the Ann Demeulemeester riding boots that have no doubt sold out in her own store.)

   Schuttershofstraat 9 A/B: 011 32 3 233 2093.

With the great wave of the Antwerp fashion revolution now largely in the rearview mirror, one might think back to several turning points and crescendos throughout its history, like the Golden Spool or the London Trade Show debut. But perhaps greater than any of these was the six-month, city-wide festival held in 2001 and curated by Walter Van Beirendonck: Mode2001 Landed–Geland.

Occurring less than two years into the new millennium, the entire phenomenon sought to merge the many forces that had converged upon fashion in the late 1980s and 1990s, namely anti-fashion currents from Japan and Belgium. Historically a port city and a hub of the global diamond trade, Antwerp, often called the “cosmopolitan village”, was the perfect setting to channel these disparate forces, bringing together its own homegrown talent with the prowess of Rei Kawakubo, Comme des Garçons, and Chanel. Spanning four comprehensive exhibitions, a magazine launch and an ambitious set of public installations, it explored more than simply the convergence of Eastern and Western fashion. Van Beirendonck’s tripartite thematic framework, Emotions, Radicals, and Mutilate, distilled concepts as far ranging as notions of spirit and emotional ideation, agency in cyberspace, taboo, and fetish.

A panoramic world of color and fashion that spread across Antwerp, the six-month event was decisively what the Venice Biennale, Documenta, and the World Expo were and are for art and culture — but this time for fashion.

The Flemish Data-net

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By 1993, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo were already well established on the fashion scene. Having both debuted 12 years earlier at Paris Fashion Week in 1981, the duo had not only caused uproar, controversy, and great discussion amongst the Parisian press and socialites, but over the ensuing decade had built a substantial body of work that influenced a huge number of designers, and most certainly the Belgians. Martin Margiela was among the first to seriously carry this avant-garde trajectory, and was the first of the Antwerp cohort to leave for Paris and wholly take up the anti-fashion mantle.

Designer’s File, a lesser known Japanese publication published by Pia Mooks, serves as an exceptionally in-depth profile guide to many of the most significant figures in the early 1990s fashion world. From this publication, we have shared translations of profiles on Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, and Martin Margiela, which explore their design philosophies, aesthetic approaches, critical viewpoints, and provide valuable biographical context.

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GTO Timemachine

Simons’ influence goes all the way back to 1925 in Detroit Michigan, the year John DeLorean was born. A product of the city’s public school system and prestigious Cass Technical High School, the young DeLorean’s aptitude and early creative talents carried him through nearby Lawrence Technical College, and eventually landed him a full-time position at the Packard Motor Company. DeLorean was soon promoted to head of research and development for PMC, but upon the company’s merger with Indiana-based Studebaker, he accepted a poaching offer at the illustrious General Motors in 1956.

Soon after taking the position, DeLorean pioneered dozens of groundbreaking innovations and quickly ascended to the head of GM’s Pontiac division. In 1963, DeLorean launched the GTO, the now-legendary muscle car that came to embody the peak of Detroit manufacturing prowess and cultural influence. After a decade of extraordinary success and reaching nearly to the top of General Motors’ corporate hierarchy, John DeLorean dramatically left the company to start his own self-named venture: the DeLorean Motor Company.1

DeLorean wasted little time establishing his own company, setting up a manufacturing base in Northern Ireland and tapping Giorgetto Giugiaro to design what would soon become the ultimate sports car of the future—the DMC-12. Unfortunately, things quickly went south for the free-spirited Detroit scion, as the car significantly undersold, plunging the company into severe debt. A subsequent arrest in 1982 saw John DeLorean charged with large-scale cocaine distribution. DeLorean successfully defended himself in court, beating all charges—including tax evasion and fraud—but by the time of his acquittal, the DeLorean Motor Company had already been liquidated. Despite this spectacular collapse, the DeLorean DMC-12 gained massive cult status worldwide, most famously through its role in Back to the Future.

Remembered not only for his revolutionary designs, DeLorean’s free-spirited ersatz futurism pushed Detroit car design through the 1960s and 1970s against the grain of entrenched corporate conservatism. The DMC-12—his magnum opus—rendered in monochromatic stainless steel and propelled by Detroit’s late-industrial utopianism, laid the visual and ideological blueprint for Simons’ collection nearly 20 years later: its greyscale palette, angular severity, and uneasy balance between speed, rebellion, and cultural uncertainty.

Percolations in the Windy City

Just a few hundred miles away across Lake Michigan—and about one year after John DeLorean debuted the Pontiac Firebird—Curtis Alan Jones was born in the great midwestern city of Chicago, Illinois. Jones’ father was a DJ and an electric engineer by day, and his aunt owned a record store which Jones worked at throughout his childhood.2 Jones went on to study chemical engineering at the University of Illinois, and later UC Berkeley, but returned to his hometown in 1991. By the end of that year he had begun releasing music under the name Cajmere, producing more traditionally house-inclined tacks such as Brighter Days, as well as acidic, industrial-tinged tracks like Coffee Pot. The latter, remixed by Jones in an effort to push the track further,3 became one of the defining anthems of Chicago House, and an oozing, mechanical emblem of the Rust Belt’s greater sonic identity.

Jones claimed the Green Velvet moniker in 1993 and established the long-standing Cajual Records imprint that same year, quickly cementing himself as a cornerstone of the Chicago House Music scene. Green Velvet came to embody the harder, edgier and more industrial end of Chicago House, and the culmination being Jones’ 1995 track, Flash. This heavy-pumping rave tune lampooned a Public Service Announcement with its omniscient narrator taking the listener on a narrated sonic tour of the mythical ‘Club Bad’, where drug-addled, non-conformist youth converged to rave, dance, and engage in Bacchanalia. While the track and its remixed versions were released under Jones’ own Cajual label, the single would also be released in Belgium by Yeti Records,4 where it surely made its way to the curious ears of a young Raf Simons.

The sonic booms of Flash, described by Muzik Magazine as the ‘hooves of the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse’,5 had gone full techno, imbued with the pounding factory-line rhythms of Jones’ Northeastern Detroit neighbors. For Simons, this alien, cold and industrial sonic gob smacking was the perfect score for the punk and techno-obsessed youth he would soon come to define.

The Futurist Manifesto Arrives on Wheels

1995 not only saw Flash released in Belgium, but also the rapid rise of a young Raf Simons, who debuted his first ever collection of clothes that same year. Simons began developing the collection in 1994, a year after interning for Walter Van Beirendonck, who, along with Linda Loppa, both urged and guided the 27-year old to take up fashion professionally.

Always heavily influenced by music and the plethora of subcultures that both stemmed from and generated it, Simons went on to produce increasingly popular and revolutionary collections, eventually staging full-fledged shows at Paris Fashion Week by Autumn-Winter 1997. At the turn of the century he had produced six full collections, masterfully blending punk, collegiate, and youth culture, and always seemed to use his soundtracks as a potent fulcrum for his aesthetic vision—Underworld, Public Image Ltd., Depeche Mode and Belgian New Beat bands like A Split Second came to define the auditory architecture of Simons’ continually unveiling universe.

Following on the heels of his Gabber-themed Spring-Summer 2000 presentation, the Autumn-Winter 2000/01 show was held on January 23rd of 2000, less than a month into the new millennium. The show began with Green Velvet’s pumping 909 kick drum and snare, while a 1990s Lincoln Town Car Stretch Limousine pulled out onto the catwalk, headlights blaring into the crowd. The limo dropped off several models on the stage, who then followed a spot-lit path along the catwalk, surrounded by flaming torches. Green Velvet’s hypnotic monologue simultaneously began blaring throughout the hall, eventually ushering in a DeLorean DMC-12; replete with its famous gull wing door design, the utopian steel machine peeled onto the front of the stage, depositing several additional models.

As evidenced by the stream of tall, fair-haired Belgian and Dutch models employed throughout the show, Simons’ designs were rendered entirely in greyscale and extended the austere, Catholic severity that increasingly dominated his work until this point. Akin to the DeLorean’s stripped-down, essentialist stainless-steel body panels, the clothes were minimalist, and even monastic at points.

Combining aesthetic elements of DeLorean, Green Velvet, and Lincoln’s future-luxury limousines, the collection served as an oblique homage to the futurism that came to define 20th-century Midwestern America—a region that gave the world the shopping mall, paved roads, the automobile, techno, and house music, among other innovations. Simons, never one to shy away from the future while always looking in reverse, channelled this dense thread of cultural acceleration through the lens of Belgian fashion, a movement similarly irreverent, revolutionary, and norm-defying. Beyond the show’s spectacle itself, these late-industrial scions and innovators were not only hallmarks of changing lifestyles and modernity, but also emblems of an uncertain and chaotic future already rapidly unfolding. Simons’ youth gang of uniformed, restrained, and stylized punk sophomores served as characters forced to assimilate within the unsteady flux of internet code lines and globalized machinery, embodying the contradictions of a world caught between tradition and acceleration, religious conservatism and cultural collapse, discipline and oblivion.

Breaking Points

While sadly remembered by Raf Simons as ‘one of his worst collections ever’,6 Confusion marked a significant turning point in his career not only due to its acute cultural synthesis, but also as a breaking point for Simons, serving as his final collection before temporarily shutting down his line.

Perhaps a telling metaphor for his own career’s unstoppable speed and expansion until this point, the designer’s personal struggle with unrelenting forward progress into the future parallels the collection’s representative struggles between tradition and progress, technology and humanism, and the global shift into an unknown, hypertrophic 2000s. Luckily, the Belgians were there to guide us through it, but only with the blueprints and metadata of the great pelagic titans of innovation: the Detroit and Chicago futurists of the 20th century.

Origins of Ono

Often sparing with words and details, there is rarely such a thing as a simple request from Comme des Garçons’ stoic founder Rei Kawakubo; yet her mandate for a creative vision and soundtrack for her upcoming Spring-Summer 1988 mens’ collection was shockingly bare—simply, to make the clothes look beautiful. Many might founder under such a vague and seemingly reductive missive, yet Seigen Ono, a highly touted recording engineer, musician, and record label founder, did not.

Ono was born in 1958 in Fukushima Prefecture. He began his career engineering and recording sound domestically, with his first credited role as a recording engineer and mix assistant for Yumi Matsutoya’s Surf & Snow - Volume One (1980).1 Ono went on to engineer and master dozens of records, primarily Jazz and Jazz Fusion, as well as Pop, City Pop, Art Rock and New Wave. His first major breakthrough came in 1983, when he worked with Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Ryuichi Sakamoto to record and mix the ethereal soundtrack for Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, starring David Bowie and directed by the visionary, internationally-minded filmmaker Nagisa Ōshima. By 1987, Ono had collaborated with American Jazz composer John Zorn—most notably on Spillane, a cinematically fragmented pastiche of anti-flow jazz composition—as well as Yasuaki Shimizu’s Music for Commercials, a modern classical, electro-Japonic maze of conceptual world-building for never-having-existed corporate dreamscapes.

Beyond his recording, engineering, and collaborative work, Ono also began producing music under his own name around the same time. His debut album, Seigén, was released in 1984 on JVC, offering Jazz and Ambient neo-classical melodies sharpened into cold, stroboscopic moodscapes. He followed this in 1988 with The Green Chinese Table, which placed a stronger emphasis on classical composition. In the period between these releases, Ono also launched his own record label, Saidera, in 1987. This massively productive seven-year span, from 1980 through the end of 1987, is what ultimately caught Rei Kawakubo’s attention.

City Streets and a Blind Quartet

Ono’s initial commission was for the upcoming Spring-Summer 1988 collection for Homme Plus, Comme’s premier menswear line. In preparation, Ono enlisted several key collaborators beginning in the summer of 1987, most notably Arto Lindsay, a pioneer of New York’s No Wave scene and member of the group DNA,2 as well as saxophonist and composer John Zorn, who had previously worked with Ono on his own album Spillane.

Ono, recalling Kawakubo’s ongoing but cryptic guidance on her envisioned soundtrack, recounts being told to use “sound” but not “music.”3 Although describing this direction as “like a Zen riddle”, Ono had already been experimenting extensively with sound and noise in his prior work, particularly through the use of background noise and field recordings, which he manipulated, reversed, and abstracted. His 1984 recordings specifically incorporated the sounds of New York City streets and parks, a fitting precursor to Ono’s return to the city in 1987 to record material for Comme des Garçons.

Ono divided his 1987 recording sessions between New York City in August, Paris in September, and Tokyo in December. Instrumentation was eclectic and wide-ranging, spanning guitar and saxophone alongside harp, charango, and bolang—one of several African percussive instruments employed, and featuring prominently on Hunting for Lions, the fifth track of Volume 1. The result was tonality without ensemble: a circuitous pastiche that was part No Wave, part Japanese ambient, and wholly original, deft, disorienting, and surprising.

The Men

Held on 4 September 1987 at the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, the Spring-Summer 1988 collection began abruptly with Ono’s grand intro track, Something to Hold on To. Pounding, industrial drums, reminiscent of German composer Klaus Schulze or British industrial duo Coil, punctuated the dead-quiet air of the venue hall, accented by John Zorn’s screeching, unmistakable blasts of saxophone horn. An armada of white and powder-blue oversized suits soon barreled down the runway, adorned with prominently oversized ribbon fasteners at the lapels—a delicate, feminized detail set against otherwise imposing, wide-shouldered silhouettes. Black pinstriped and checked suiting followed, all delivered at a fast, forceful gait, augmented by the soundtrack’s successive, abrupt shifts into melodic harmony, stripped of percussion. Near the fifteen-minute mark, Kawakubo’s collection transitioned to belted oversized shirts; silhouettes reminiscent of neoclassical tunics and a fitting bookmark within Homme Plus’ worldly, atemporal vocabulary. After a tense pause, the final wave of models emerged, ushered in by Ono’s “All Men Are Heels.”

Weaving between Bossa Nova, No Wave, Jazz Fusion, and Classical, Ono’s score gave the collection a fantastical, surreal bent, somewhere between 80s British Industrial and the wafting, off-key melodies of downtown NYC’s late-night jazz clubs. Furthermore, similar to the international architecture and design movements of mid 20th century, Ono’s score feels like a global, worldly, pastiche of composition, pulling from sources as disparate as African folk (as heard in Hunting for Lions), Japonic ambient minimalism on After You…, and classical, Greco-Roman inspirations like the harps employed in Pessoa Quase Certa.

NYC to Rio

While Volume 1 of the Comme des Garçons CD documented the soundtrack to the Spring–Summer 1988 collection, Volume 2 saw Ono once again collaborate with Arto Lindsay and the downtown New York milieu, further extending the project’s international scope. In early 1988, Ono returned to New York City to record with Alfredo Perdernera (a bandoneon player associated with various tango recordings) alongside Jill Jaffe and Evan Lurie, many of whom would later become part of the Seigen Ono Ensemble.4 The following month, Ono traveled to Rio de Janeiro, again partnering with Lindsay and local Brazilian musicians, incorporating regional folk instruments such as the mentirinha.

Both volumes were formally released in 1989. The Japanese edition was published by Tokuma, while the international and UK versions were published under Venture, a subsidiary of Virgin Records. Both offerings were published on CD and vinyl, and each were adorned by the timeless, pseudo-erotic portraits of French photographer Pierre Boucher (also featured in Six, Vol. 3). The entirety of the packaging, typography and design was art directed by Tsuguya Inoue, the longtime creative visionary primarily responsible for Comme des Garçons’ inimitable, longstanding aesthetic.

Taken as a whole, the convergence of Kawakubo, Ono, and the downtown No Wave musicians represents a compelling synthesis of Comme des Garçons’ well-established anti-fashion philosophy. This surreal, atemporal fusion of avant-garde aesthetics refused confinement by geography or artificial borders, instead spanning the creative histories of Japan, Brazil, France, and the United States—merging some of the most radical cultural outputs each had to offer.

While most lauded for his work at Dior Homme in the 2000s, Hedi Slimane, the French polymath designer and photographer, first made his name at Yves Saint Laurent in the late 1990s. Slimane, fresh off a position with José Lévy, was tapped by YSL President Pierre Bergé in July of 1996 to helm its menswear division. Saint Laurent came to be the perfect proving grounds for the ambitious and young Slimane, as the house, according to Tom Ford,1 “had very little men’s wear tradition”, allowing the punk-inflected, rock-addled designer to develop his signature silhouette and uniform: narrow shoulders, a long, tapered torso and feminine-tinged shirting.

Similar to his Belgian counterpart Raf Simons, Slimane sought to re-invent menswear and turn it away from the classic, Armani and Hugo Boss dominated aesthetics and into the world of punk, subculture, and youth-driven, chaotic energy. Slimane, often described as “reviving men’s fashion identity” specifically in France, oversaw Rive Gauche Homme and Saint Laurent Denim, the two arms of the label’s prêt-à-porter offerings for men, and used these as channels to push his radical new worldview. Due to this, Slimane quickly gained a cult status and following in Japan, with an early pinnacle being the Saint Laurent menswear presentation in Tokyo for the Autumn-Winter 1998 collection, diligently covered by MR High Fashion in their October 1998 issue.

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Streets?

Akihabara is a neighborhood many ordinary Japanese people avoid at all costs. Not because of danger, threat, or inconvenience; but rather due to a sense of shame, perplexity, and derision, specifically towards its notoriety as the spiritual home of Otaku—Japan’s pejorative term for incels, shut-ins, and generally asocial types. I too felt this sentiment when I lived in Tokyo from 2018 to 2019, a time when I was constantly reminded of the neighborhood’s connotations.

A significant portion of Japanese cultural discourse has been dedicated to the perils, shortcomings, and perceived national embarrassment that Otaku culture represents to the Japanese people. Despite this, Akihabara is also quite famous for its history of electronics stores, and simply strolling down any side alley, one will find a mosaic of subterranean used cassette vendors, DVD stores, radio components, and so on. Aptly nicknamed Electric Town, Akihabara quickly became a black market for electronics following the disasters of the World War II period, and eventually formalized into a hub for major wholesalers and electronics retailers. The economic crisis of the early 1990s bubble period resulted in a sharp decline in not only the appliance market, but also in economic opportunities for many of Japan’s youth. Recent graduates who saw their parents live through the excesses and utter riches of the late 1980s soon found themselves utterly hopeless, wandering aimlessly through the unstable and uncertain 1990s. All of this accelerated the rise of Otaku culture and its many manifestations—arcades, figurine stores, maid cafes, and Idol venues—and Akihabara became its home base.

Another product of Japan’s bubble period1, Takao Yamashita and his hydra-like label, beauty:beast, saw an implicit connection to the rise, fall, and transformations of the Akihabara neighborhood. His Spring-Summer 2000 collection presentation for 2beauty:beast (also stylized as also beauty:beast) was a radical, ad-hoc take-over of the neighborhood, activating history, culture and the legacy of the many perceptions and historical contexts of this fascinating yet somewhat controversial area.

Silver Screen Hyperloops

Code-named ‘Rumble Fish’, the 2 beauty:beast presentation for the Spring-Summer 2000 season took the 1983 film of the same name as its direct inspiration. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola and based on the novel by S.E. Hinton, the film follows Rusty James, a troubled teen navigating various gang conflicts, while also internally coming to terms with a loss of self and innocence. A stylized meditation on youth and identity in classic American style, Yamashita would directly pull from the angsty, street-addled wardrobe of the film, employing tank tops, sleeveless jackets, and vests, and, more importantly, a sense of swagger, power, and teenage aimlessness.

Yamashita chose Akihabara as the site for an outdoor presentation of the collection, what he saw as a sort of Japanese corollary to the ‘mean streets’ of Tulsa, Oklahoma. But rather than heroin-addled teenage street bruisers from the Great Plains, Yamashita replaced them with their angst-ridden Japanese equivalents—the roving, wayward youth of Akihabara’s fluorescent-lit arcades and forgotten alleys.

Inimitable Japanese fashion channel Fashion Tsushin, discussing the collection’s planned location, described the connection as such: “by choosing a neighborhood where the clothing is meant to be worn as the stage, they expressed a sense of immediacy (you could almost touch it) and a dignity that doesn’t get lost in the crowd.”2 Not only did Akihabara, or Akiba for short, fit the bill of a clothing as a stage, it was more importantly a ground zero for misunderstood youth, angst, and the ennui that has pervaded amongst many young Japanese since the calamitous bubble crash of the early 1990s.

Flashes in the Circuity

Invitees to the collection received two very important materials before the show: a disposable camera, housed in a casing with information on the time and date of the show, and a map to the exact location of the event. Dubbed ‘Shoot on the Street’, the presentation was scheduled for 4 PM on Wednesday, November 3, 1999. The map, printed in a crimson ink on brown parchment paper, specifies several main thoroughfares of Akiba as the ‘active zones’ for the happening, where the models would be roaming through the streets, ready for invitees to capture their image via the disposable cameras.

24 models were sent out into the Akiba zone, dressed in zip-up blousons, vests, and sleeveless pieces, acting as roving prizes for the guests to find and photograph. The fabrics, primarily cotton, and particularly denim, centered on grey, black, navy and white, with several pieces popping vivid purple with vibrant patterns.

As opposed to a traditional fashion show, where models are presented and served to a passive, observing audience, the Rumble Fish collection flipped this dynamic, with the spectator becoming the active participant, and directly controlling perception, context, and even documentation of the collection. MR High Fashion, covering the event, described it as “Centered on Showa-dori — which becomes a pedestrian paradise on weekends — models walked through the crowds, weaving through alleys around the station and nearby parks, while photographers and spectators searched for them. It was a new kind of experiment.”3 This ‘new kind of experiment’, similar to artists of American Minimalism or the French Situationists, placed the spectator at the center of experience, rather than the mere passive recipient of it.

Tulsa Time Loops

By placing guests, critics, enthusiasts, and devotees as the arbiters of their own experience, Yamashita’s ‘Shoot on the Street’ remains a radical re-interpretation of fashion performance, not dissimilar to Margiela’s ad-hoc, situationist-inspired activations such as his Autumn-Winter 1994/95 collection. Furthermore, this tossing aside of hierarchy serves as a potent corollary to the characters of Rumble Fish, the aimless youth who sought to define themselves in a chaotic, 1980s culture, irrespective of traditional structures. And much like the meandering, shunned Otaku and Hikikomori4 of Japan’s Lost Generation on the streets of Akiba, Takao Yamashita painted an invigorating portrait of the legacy of a district perfectly representative of the same economic and cultural forces that shaped his own artistic background, endeavors, and label.

In retrospect, the collection is a potent meditation on the drift and electric tension of a generation and nation that sought to define themselves in the ether of fallout, and on the ways Japan’s youth, older generations, and culture at large came to reckon with this transformation.

When tracing back through the many cross-woven code lines of the Belgian archives, the formation of the Golden Spindle, beginning in 1981, is where it all began.

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